My friend William Gillis writes to me:
For over a decade I’ve frequented The Red & Black Cafe in Portland – an IWW, explicitly anarchist, worker-owned coop – and over the years they’ve faced all the sort of police harassment and surveillance you’d expect for a venue catering to radical activists.
Recently a uniformed police officer entered the cafe ostensibly to buy a cup of coffee – I can only imagine the horrified looks – and was politely asked to leave by one of the workers/managers. PDX police have recently committed more than a few outrageous murders and the worker explained with infinite patience that a cop made his clientele feel like they were in danger.
For some reason this seems to be setting off a shitstorm of national-level outrage with coverage on major news networks and blogs. I have good friends on staff and their phones are ringing off the hook with death threats. Mainstream conservative and liberal pundits have talked of showing up with weapons to start a confrontation. Frankly my brain clouds over with rage every time I read the fractally idiotic comments or threats.
My friends could really use some support; in this environment some kind words or awareness from those who aren’t fanatical devotees of the police state would go a long way. I’d really appreciate it if you could use the magical reach of your blog.
Here are some links that don’t directly send me into a rage-coma: 1, 2, 3
I have nothing to add except ditto. Please let’s do what we can to support the Red & Black Café against this crap.
You sir are a tard. Without the police relentlessly patrolling, you would not be able to walk to the corner and back. The middle class supports the majority of the police. WE are the country, without the space and safety we provide by our taxes, you silly little cowardly fools would not exist. Hate the ceos, but not the cogs in the wheel.
Thank you, George Wallace.
George Wallace, hmm. Not at all. Is this your tactic, try to link me with some racist bufon, I am neither.
To other commenters, yes the majority of decent citizens do not commit acts that warrant police intervention. But there are many many situations that do. We (you and I) are not the ones commiting vicious street crimes. I’ve spent many years doing utility work in the most violent parts of the city I live in. It is truly scary the amount of disrespect of others basic rights that exist in this part of our society. This is a big part of what the police do, keep the street level parasites from thumping your ass for your stuff or just for fun. Yes I understand that a lot of this stems from deep seated social problems. Ideally some day some of the more major issues can be mitigated. Until then, I appreciate the police keeping the predators in check. I personally have witnessed gang fights, robbery and ducked and covered at the sound of gunfire or the site of thugs with guns. You are fools living in a bubble for thinking we do not need the thin blue line. The predators in society look upon you as just another easy meal. Look at a country like Somalia where there is no effective ordering force. The minority of criminals have made it a nightmarish existence for the average person just trying to live their lives in peace
Paddy: Look at a country like Somalia where there is no effective ordering force.
Right, Somalia, where they have no armed men relentlessly patrolling the streets.
The rest of your comment is nothing more than an elaborate argument from intimidation combined with a shorter appeal to the majority. As for what you appreciate, you’re welcome to fund that — on your own dime and on your own property. What I don’t appreciate is that I am forced to pay for what you appreciate — “services” that I never asked for, don’t want, and will be more than glad to do without.
“Without the police relentlessly patrolling, you would not be able to walk to the corner and back.” — Paddy
“Fear of the constabulary is the only thing left now to try to curtail anarchy in the country.” — George Wallace
If you believe that the only people the police go after are those engaged in “vicious street crimes,” it’s you who are a fool living in a bubble.
Over the past thirty years, thanks to the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and assorted other moral panics, mainstream police culture has been relentlessly militarized and the due process guarantees of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments turned into toilet paper. The entire Drug War culture is a corrupt empire built on civil forfeiture robbery, coerced testimony from jailhouse snitches, warrants obtained on perjured testimony, entrapment operations that should be illegal, planted evidence, and plea bargain blackmail.
It used to be said that prison was a university of criminal knowledge, and that the inmate was released with a vocational education in how to commit crimes more effectively. Well, the police culture is likewise a university of criminal knowledge when it comes to systematically developing ways to violate the letter and spirit of the Fourth Amendment so as to manufacture convictions of people the cops “know” are guilty.
Cops have become beasts of prey, like the vicious dogs the pigs trained in secret in Animal Farm, and then unleashed to terrorize the other animals. They’ve come to view urban populations as an occupied enemy to be terrorized and intimidated into submission with shows of force.
Urban cops openly brag about showing force in an area to show the general population who’s boss. You think it’s a coincidence that they’ve almost universally shifted to black Nazi Chic uniforms?
I dare you–I FUCKING DARE YOU, if you aren’t too chickenshit to know what kind of a world you really live in–to subscribe to Radley Balko’s blog for a month. There are dozens or hundreds of SWAT raids every week all around the country, for simple possession, with the same kinds of unannounced 3AM breakins that used to be associated with the Gestapo and OGPU. You can read every week of people tasered to death or physically brutalized for “resisting arrest” when in fact they were in diabetic comas or having epileptic seizures. You can read of people beaten within an inch of their lives for “noncompliance” despite posing absolutely no physical threat of any kind, simply because the alpha male went batshit insane like a pit bull on angel dust in the face of a lesser creature that refused to show its belly. And unless someone’s lucky enough to have clear video footage to prove the goddamned uniformed filth are lying each other up–and usually not even then–you can count on the worst that will happen to them being suspension with pay pending a pro forma investigation concluding “all procedures were followed” and there was “no evidence of wrongdoing.”
Keep telling yourself, if it makes it easier for you to go to sleep at night, that it will never happen to you so long as you’re a good pink little citizen who keeps his nose clean, because the police are a thin blue line between your pink little world and chaos, that they only go after the “bad people” and “troublemakers.” But you’re the one living in a bubble.
It was good, pink little burghers like you, people who didn’t know–and didn’t want to know–who made Nazi Germany possible. Keep telling yourself, just like Sgt. Schultz: “I see no-SINK! I know no-SINK!” Maybe if you cower enough in your own piss, the big dawgs won’t turn on you after you’ve sold everyone else out.
Kevin, that kicked so much ass. I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you how much I admire you, but damn do I.
Somalia seems to have improved under anarchy, if one chooses to grant that title:
http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2006/02/better_off_stat.html
As well as this.
Excellent point – and exactly what I asked Langley at the Red and Black when he told me he did not believe that police were necessary.
“Without the police relentlessly patrolling, you would not be able to walk to the corner and back.”
That’s an emphatically cynical view of civilized society. The values our society instills in us as children are what make us safe, because they make most people civilized. Relentless police patrols make us unsafe because a violent organization cannot use violence to make civilized society less violent.
If you and your beloved cops would allow us to organize our own nonstate means of defense instead of constantly stamping them out, you’d be freed from the burden of having to pay taxes for or “defense.”
You don’t get to be a big baby about all the danger you say is out there in the world – “Without the police relentlessly patrolling, you would not be able to walk to the corner and back.” – and then call someone else a coward.
The only one living in fear – who apparently is so afraid of people that he needs the state to stand in between himself and humanity – is you.
Get out of your basement and meet some actual human beings, and maybe you’ll find out that the world isn’t out to get you and the idea of a malevolent universe is a fraud sold by people whose paychecks and special privileges are at stake.
Also, “tard?” Really? What are you, 12?
i’m still sick from the food.
“Without the police relentlessly patrolling, you would not be able to walk to the corner and back.”
If humankind is so dangerous and violent and murderous that we must constantly be held in check using physical force and threats of violence, lest we descend into chaos; if you truly believe that “without the police relentlessly patrolling, you would not be able to walk to the corner and back,” how can you reconcile that with the fact that police officers are also human and thus, unlikely to be any better than the savages who would rape you and tear you asunder if not for the police?
Or do you posit that police are a better breed of humans, our ‘superiors’, and they alone are capable of beating us back from the violent urges of our most primal, animal selves?
That is to say, the contention that the police hold the line between order and chaos is a laughably ignorant proposition. It is humanity itself, every person, who creates order in our world, not a select group of our betters.
Well said Tim. But then it is obvious that liberals/progressives/conservatives do actually believe that government bureaucrats are a better species of individuals than the masses.
“…police officers are also human and thus, unlikely to be any better…”
Actually, if you’ve heard anything about the screening process for would-be cops, they’re likely to be worse.
I agree. And I say that as someone whose father was a cop in a town with a population ranging from about 10k to 20k, from the 1950s to the 1970s. Although he was a state functionary who enforced a lot of laws I think were wrong, I am also certain he was a decent man who tried to treat people decently by his lights, and who saw himself as a member of the community helping his neighbors. But my sleepy Ozarks town was probably atypical even then, and since then police culture has metamorphosed out of recognition. The job attracts insecure authoritarians drawn by the black uniforms and weapons and the opportunity to throw their weight around–people who themselves would *be* ordinary criminals if they didn’t have the outlet of a uniform to do the same thing with official sanction. It’s obvious from the way those people swagger around they’re aware that those around them are intimidated or worse–and they absolutely eat it up.
Remember Officer Dim in A Clockwork Orange, and you’ll get the idea.
If you really want to get pissed, if you haven’t already, read the comments on that blog entry.
http://www.corneliaseigneur.com/where’s-a-portland-police-officer-to-get-a-cup-of-coffee/
Yikes.
That one by the retired cop was especially bad. People who are afraid of cops should take a look at themselves? Oh, come on–who *isn’t* afraid when he sees a police car in the rearview mirror? Some libertarian commentator one used that as a thought-experiment to determine whether you lived in a police state: When you notice a cop following you do you feel relief that you’re being “protected and served,” or do you start wondering what you could have “done wrong” and driving in an exaggeratedly “safe” manner to the point of suspiciousness? For 99% of the people, it’s the latter–and the cops know, and ENJOY it.
The other laughable thing the guy said was that all the people hurt by cops were diobeying “orders”–as if any refusal to “obey orders” justified anything the cops felt like doing in response, without regard to proportionality. Even if you’re not posing an actual physical threat to a cop, or weren’t in the process of doing anything that posed a threat to anyone else, simply mouthing off or refusing to prostrate yourself on command means you deserve to be beaten to death. It’s the mentality of a vicious dog that’s driven mad by resistance to its alpha male authority.
Benjamin, Anna – even among tax feeding occupations, being a cop is not the most dangerous. That dubious distinction actually goes to garbage collectors. Yeah, that’s right, garbage collectors suffer more injuries and deaths than cops – by far. And, at least, they do indeed perform a useful function for more than just a few minutes out of their entire careers.
Thanks for whoever posted the working link to the story. I agree that the level of naivete in that post is staggering, to the point where one might suspect it to be satire. She says things like “We live in the suburbs and have never had a problem with police”, and gushes about how they deserve “gratitude, honor, and respect”, etc. Unfortunately this attitude is common-place, and I have personally witnessed servers at cafes going so far as to offer free meals to cops that come in!
This is so depressing – so many people instinctively jumping to defend the police.
I’m sure the officer in question is a perfectly nice person, but it does not change the fact that his chosen profession is to intimidate and bully others into doing what they say.
The cafe manager was reasonable and polite – cops make many people uneasy (frankly you never know when one is going to take exception to something and make up some reason to harrass you).
And why do all these police defenders not take issue with people receiving death threats and intimidation? Are they due it for being ‘impolite’ to a servant of the ruling classes?
For the record, that is not me.
I put this on facebook.
H.L. Mencken on the Polizei:
Naturally pedantic, and trained, like pedagogues, in the doctrine that all human beings are precisely alike and may be handled like stalks of wheat, BB shot or hogs at the stockyards, they delight in the opportunity to make and enforce ever more complex and nonsensical regulations. … Obviously the police, like Judge Elbert H Gary, have no need to wait for heaven: they enjoy it here and now. What could be more charmingly to their taste than a body of laws which fills two courtrooms to suffocation every day, and keeps three judges leaping and tugging like fire-engine horses?
“Traffic,” the Baltimore Evening Sun, March 23, 1925.
The police enforce drug prohibition which results in vicious organized crime and corrupt govt creating immense danger for common citizens caught in the crossfire. Then police enforce gun laws preventing the vast majority from having the means of self defence when they need it most.
Quoted directly from their website:
“We strive to provide a community space that is safe and welcoming to all.”
“…safe…”?
*laughs* I wonder if they would be willing to tear their phones off their walls so that in case of a fire or a robbery, they won’t have to “bother” the 911 operators by asking for a responder to come over to help.
“…welcoming to all” ?
I guess that means all except police officers with money to buy goods from them.
I won’t be visiting this place anytime soon. As in: forever…
Having an armed member of a criminal state gang with a record of violence against anarchists present is precisely incompatible with a welcoming and safe environment.
As for 911, first stop forcibly preventing anarchists from using modes of protection other than the police, and then you can talk about hypocrisy for calling the police. Eating the meals one is served in prison is not an endorsement of the prison.
And even less an endorsement of the food, for the vegans among us.
Big Mack: I wonder if they would be willing to tear their phones off their walls so that in case of a fire or a robbery, they won’t have to “bother” the 911 operators by asking for a responder to come over to help.
Really, dude, seriously? I can’t speak for Red and Black, but I for one would love it if I could get out of being subjected to government laws and government force simply by not dialing 911. Just leave me alone, stop taxing me for “services” I didn’t ask for, stop imposing laws on me I didn’t agree to, and let me make my own arrangements as far as fire safety or self-defense goes, and I’ll be more than happy if you never pick up the phone for me. I suspect that many Anarchists feel quite the same.
Of course, no-one who raises this kind of argument really means it seriously. They point out “services” we didn’t ask for, insist that we must obviously want them no matter what the cost, and then presume without asking that we’ve consented to the government that provides them, without so much as stopping to genuinely ask whether we would indeed like to buy what they are selling. It’s not an argument so much as a guilt-tripping wail: “Look at how much I do for you, and you don’t even call on Rulers’ Day!”
What’s the problem with that? If a stranger come to enter in your house, you have the right to refuse that!
What’s the problem with that? If someone come to enter in your house, you have the right to refuse him!
You hypocrites smear the police for now, but wait until you’re a victim of rape or robbery.
Wait until YOU’RE a victim of rape or robbery–BY the police. Red & Black’s negative reaction to the cops was provoked–precisely–by the cops’ own thuggish behavior in the community.
There’s no need to “smear” the police–all you have to do is reprint the real news of what they’ve actually done.
And it’s amazing how many people like you raise the possibility we might have to call the cops, as if it were some original idea you’d just thought up on your own. You might notice that the universal response to all such taunts here is that when the state coercively crowds out all competing voluntary alternatives to the service it offers, there’s no hypocrisy involved in using those services.
“Just wait’ll you need a cop! What’ll you do, beat the shit out of YOURSELF and plant evidence on YOURSELF?”
“Just wait’ll you need a cop! What’ll you do, beat the shit out of YOURSELF and plant evidence on YOURSELF?”
Ok, I loled.
Rocky,
Let’s say I am the victim of a rape or robbery. If I decline to call the cops, and instead make my own arrangements for healing and restitution without their proffered help, will you then concede my right to be left the hell alone, rather than forced to pay the police’s salaries and submit to the police’s arbitrary demands?
If so, great — I’m in. You can can the charges of hypocrisy, and since many Anarchists do refuse to call the police on principle, that would suggest that a lot of people ought to be left alone who are not currently being left alone.
If not, then you can still can the charges of hypocrisy, because unless you will actually respect the wishes of those who would like to opt out of police “protection,” this muttering of “Just you wait and see!” is nothing more than a crude argument from intimidation.
P.S. I don’t know about you, but I can actually name off at least a half dozen friends and loved ones who have been victims of rape or robbery. Care to guess how many of them went to the police for “help”?
You may not be aware of this, but 90% of rape survivors never report the rape to the police. The main reason why is because most rape survivors have a reasonable belief that the police are not going to do a goddamned thing for them.
In England, and i imagine most other countries, something like just 20% (don’t hold me to that exact statistic) of the crime actually reported ever gets solved.
It’s like we live in some kind of anarchy…
Darian Worden has a good piece on this topic here.
If I put up a sign that banned panhandlers and hobos I would have leftist all over my ass. Double standards are bogus.
I agree that double standards are bogus. But you haven’t shown that the present case is a double standard. In order for the “double standard” objection to apply, there mustn’t be any morally relevant difference between the two cases.
If panhandlers and hoboes were armed agents of an aggressive criminal association that was known to target the clientele of your store, then we’d have an analogy.
I doubt the left-libertarians around these parts would deny your right to ban panhandlers and hobos, or anyone else.
All the “discrimination!” outrage from the prostrate statist tools here really sets me to thinking.
Far as I’m concerned, it’s safe to assume that every hominid wearing a police uniform, badge, weaponry, restraint tools and comms devices is a robber at least under a natural law theory of justice (that is to say, show me even one who hasn’t written someone a ticket for a non-rights-violating traffic “violation” and I’ll withdraw my “every” claim). If that is granted, then all cops are outlaws. Outlaws have no legitimate claim to protection by the members of a free society and, therefore, I would support the actions of anyone discriminating against cops for any reason whatsoever and as violently as possible, up to and including, but not limited to, shooting them in the face on sight.
Note that not all of my commenting comrades here will agree with this stance.
Mike – I only disagree insofar as the results would not be optimal.
Morally, your argument is sound.
Thanks, John. I’m not precisely sure what you’re optimizing for here, but I also share the same concern, nebulous though it may be.
In addition to prudential concerns, I think there are moral reasons for preferring less violent to more violent responses to aggression whenever the likely results of each are comparable.
A true statement, Doctor Long. I wasn’t getting at my preferences here, though (let alone what others’ preferences ought to be), but simply rather what I’d support… at least as long as I can cower in fear behind my computer terminal secure in the knowledge that the police are “relentlessly patrolling”.
well, we all want to know what this character who wants a cop on every corner is doing writing to an anarchist blog. I’ve been living in Montreal for quite a while now, and have noticed that the streets are safe 24/7. Even my daughter walks them alone. I’ve been to places in the States where the cops don’t even go, like Anacostia in DC, where you have to be on your toes, well, not get uptight. In fact, the only time I was hassled living there was by a couple of cops. The ‘US is a police state, and has been for a number of years. I suggest you Yanks just go and live somewhere else just to get the idea.
I wrote the original blog post “Where’s a Police Officer to Get a Cup of Coffee?” – no one in the shop even noticed the police officer in there when he was asked to leave. It is a matter of human decency.
Best regards, Cornelia
http://www.corneliaseigneur.com/why-i-went-to-the-red-and-black-in-the-first-place/
How do you know who noticed the officer and who didn’t?
Did you interview everyone in the cafe?
Personally I feel uncomfortable whenever I come across a cop. It would go doubly in an explicitly anarchist cafe – especially given the harassment many similar spaces get from the police and ‘law abiding citizens’.
Human decency goes both ways, and the police do not show it to others – it is contrary to the nature of the institution.
And where’s the human decency in this?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a73_1251661761
Best. Spam. Ever.
All gone. 🙁
No, that was just the nonsensical ravings of a furious, megalomaniacal madman, blinded with rage by the realization of his own illogic and lack of useful insight. Shouting and Screaming to be heard by increasingly indifferent once-believers. Come to think of it, I think it was copy-pasted from a column by Paul Krugman.
b-psycho:
Brandon:
Are these claims incompatible?
Affirmative. The comment he’s talking about, which I removed, was not spam. It was not selling anything, had no links to anything, and made sense, assuming you are hopelessly insane. It was written by a real person. It is the manifesto of a lunatic, and that’s not the game we’re in — publishing the manifestos of lunatics. That is why I removed it, not because it was spam — because it was offtopic.
I do agree with him about this:
Makes perfect sense.
FWIW, you have a narrower definition of spam than Wikipedia does.
True, I tend to regard the noncommercial stuff as trolling. But you can put that comment back if you want. I just don’t want to give that wacko an audience.
Oh no, I wasn’t arguing for putting it back. (Arguing that it’s spam is not exactly an argument for putting it back!)
The police do not serve nor protect, they follow orders. And any business is justified when they refuse to serve the legal mafia.