To me the problem with police is that they protect private property. Private property is a network of oppressive systems that all work to hurt the average schmuck and nature for the benefit of someone enclosing the commons.
Rangers still have arrest power and can put you in that prison system I oppose, but they aren't protecting private property. They're protecting the commons. I don't want poachers on public lands because they degrade the ecosystems that provide for me and protect me. I don't want people defacing national parks because those belong to the public a century from now. I don't want people dumping shit or camping irresponsibly in national forests because wildfires impact the entire community for generations. Littering in parks hurts everyone and everything encountering it while breeding the pests that spread disease.
Those are crimes against everyone who does or will exist. Environmental crimes and ecocide need to be regulated. Public land needs to be protected or the private businesses that pigs protect will clear cut the forests and destroy the rivers like they did before the rangers.
National parks are not the commons though. They have been stolen from indigenous people, and indigenous people are not really allowed to do their thing there.
Everything in the US is a hate crime in its implementation. There's no way around that. But natural preserves would still have to exist under communism. Under the control of the local tribal nations violating the territory of the tribal commons meant a band of warriors killing the cracker doing it, and I'm fine with that too if we hand over control of those lands tomorrow. That land just has to exist intact no matter who governs it under any system because you drink the water and breathe the air it's supplying. Any damage to those ecosystems and everyone suffers, greater biodiversity and everyone benefits. Some of those parks are the historical ruins of those tribes' ancestral tribes, some aren't even accessible to most tourists so they're mostly preserved for the subsistence usage of the local tribes, some are the watershed for massive chunks of the country that would otherwise go to war with each other if there wasn't someone funded to manage the ecosystem generating that water.
Even without being stolen land, national parks are not the commons in function. One of the points of the commons and why it was destroyed was that it could be lived on, its resources used, and its game hunted by the commoners. You can't do that in a national park.
Okay, maybe this is a bit too heavy of a question to present here, I know I'm risking starting a struggle session. But most people here are either MLs or something similar, meaning we're socialists who recognize the need for a state apparatus before full communism, and even the best of best socialist states still have entities that do things that can only be described as "policing". And we generally recognize that's a thing that has to be done cuz not matter what you're going to have anti-social elements in any society, even if you're doing socialism very very well. We say ACAB cuz we hate cops of bourgeoise government, but I think we all generally recognize that under any sort of political system there's gonna have to be groups that do policing work.
And as a person who's done a lot of outdoorsy stuff, I will say, a park or nature preserve does require some people to guard against anti-social elements. There are A LOT of people who will do extremely stupid/destructive/weird shit in national parks, like trying to pet a bear, not disposing of their waste properly, destroying pieces of nature for souvenirs, so you do need some people with some kind of authority who can go "hey stop that" and kick them out if they keep doing it.
I think such people should be under public overweight, shouldn't carry guns on regular duty, ect ect. But they should exist unless you want campgrounds on national parks to get filled with burning man types who leave shit everywhere.
filled with burning man types who leave shit everywhere.
We work pretty hard to kick those people out of Burning Man too.
No offense if you're into Burning Man type events, but the more research I do into the history of it the more I'm convinced even from the get go it was a bougie faux-hippy escapist event. I'm fine with the idea behind having a bunch of people do art and drugs out in nature together but the OG Burning Man was organized by a bunch of Bay Area tech bros who never claimed to be leftists of any persuasion and the environmentally friendliness of the event is usually overstated by the organizers.
No offense taken for sure; you're not wrong about any of that. I've been going for 21 years, and am in pretty deep with the volunteer public safety / conflict resolution group out there. There are leftist elements to it--the group that I work with in particular is, I think, a really good alternative model for policing that's worth consideration--but it is in no way a leftist event or organization generally.
I like it because it's a way for me to push myself into physically uncomfortable situations to practice self-reliance and patience (I did almost 20 days out there in a tent last year), and because I think it provides a good experimentation ground for alternative models of social relationships and organization. Also, I have friends that I only see once a year out there (I even met my wife there doing the same volunteer work I do). While it's certainly not a leftist space by design, there are leftist elements to it (decommodification and inclusion, primarily), and I think it provides a useful kind of liminal space for people to try out different ways of living together that would be hard to experiment with in normal life. There are things leftism can take from Burning Man, in my opinion, even if the ideology of the org itself isn't leftist. Some of the regional events are way better politically, and do have more explicitly leftist organizational principles.
The national park service has a complicated history. Many parks and monuments were still occupied by native americans when the parks were established, and rangers helped force them out for 'conservation' purposes. Until the last 40-50 years or sooner, many parks were more for recreation and has little focus on conservation. An example of this is dumping fish in Crater Lake for fishing purposes, which has changed its composition permanently as it never has fish before. Many parks have a history of racism, which is only being recognized by some of the parks post-george floyd. I love going outside more than most, but more work needs to be done to protect the wilderness and compensate native americans. I remember a couple years ago some articles were written suggesting parks should be returned to the native american tribes they were taken from, which if possible would be a good step.
Ultimately I'm saying that parks themselves can be bad sometimes, even though I love them
Some rangers do act as cops (the ones with guns), and there are also park police.
Wow a lake with no fish "naturally" thats crazy. Why didnt anyone bring fish there earlier?
Because it was a sacred site for natives whose ancestors witnessed the eruption and the lake's creation. Also the only population center nearby is next to the Klamath river, one of the largest sources of salmon in North America before the dams decimated them
Fish were only brought by the second administrator of the park. He stole it from the first guy, who he literally fought because he had business interests there and they were from competing political parties. Fish destroyed the delicate ecosystem of the lake. It will never recover because it's impossible to remove all the fish
Prefacing this with the fact that I'm a
But, I've never met a thumb-ass powertripping park ranger. They put on workshops for people to learn about bugs and stuff too which is very cool.
A park ranger ruined my epic tiktok where I try riding a bison, so yes
Ahh could you not be the next Darwin Award winner?
STOP INTERRUPTING MY VANITY SHOW PIG!
"park ranger" is a broad title within the NPS. when i worked for them I got a badge and was told in a beginning-of-season meeting that "we're all rangers" even though i was in the science side of things and barely ever interacted with the public (we were supposed to wear the badge at work but i never did and neither did my coworkers). interpretive rangers are generally cool, they're the people who work at the visitor center, lead hikes, do talks about astronomy or wildlife, etc. they're usually either young people straight out of college or retirees volunteering. cop rangers can be real assholes individually but they don't kill people as often city cops, they do have a better "mission" and often assist in search and rescues and things like that. still they are law enforcement officers legally and i tried to avoid them and distrusted them for that reason, didn't want to get busted for smoking dope lol.
Seems from the comments that there's different types, some bad and some good. I feel that our wild lands should be protected in some way. Someone needs stop poaching, defacing of natural landmarks, deforestation/illegal logging, uncontrolled wild fires, do search and rescue, teach conservation and appreciation for the natural world, etc. if they do this then they're good in my book. If their job is busting people for smoking grass,
bear fuckingfucking bare naked in the wilderness, harassing first nation peoples and other bigotry, then they're just a fed pig.Smoking weed is probably fine, although if seeds get thrown in and disturb the natural ecosystem that could be bad, but drinking I would argue should pretty much be prohibited in protected lands. People will absolutely throw their trash around instead of doing the right thing.
Yes. I live near a national park and have had multiple bad encounters with park rangers, and have also heard stories about others (I am white). If it quacks like a duck etc.
Park rangers are cops but most laws they enforce are entirely reasonable. You can have some shitty ones that fuck things up but most are morally about the same as a regular job. If they wanted to fuck with people, they wouldn't be a park ranger, they'd be a city cop. The fact that they decided to do shit in the woods instead of patrol cities makes me give them the benefit of the doubt.
Most people who have bad interactions with rangers are dumb kids doing something they shouldn't. Which explains why Hexbear is so quick to jump on them.
I was arrested in the Grand Canyon for essentially being a hippy and those fucking pigs planted evidence on me... I'mma say yes.
They can and do arrest people. Just because they do it for reasons that leftists like doesn't mean that they aren't agents of state violence.
Honestly questions like this really get at the carceral divide in the radical left. Some of us think ACAB is just a cheeky slogan and not an actual political principle.
Definitely true, but I think park rangers could still be a viable part of the state after some restructuring where as the entire idea of policing for the general population pretty much has to be torn down.
Depends a lot by agency and specific role. Many park rangers are mainly focused on conservation, maintenance work or public education. There are also law enforcement rangers who are explicitly cops. The forest service law enforcement guys I used to interact with definitely seemed like some of the most tolerable cops I've ever interacted with (because they are mainly dedicated to protecting a public resource rather than private property). That being said, they are still cops who will be on the other side of the line when the chips are down.
Also, this nuance doesn't apply to urban national parks law enforcement rangers. Some of the worst cops around, taking continuous harassment of homeless people to the next level
[CW: mild discussions of violence, abuse]
I think people take the ACAB slogan too far.
This is what separates out the principled people from the baby leftists and the ones whose politics are vibes-based.
ACAB is an ideological dead-end. After the revolution there will need to be people who intervene to protect people from things like child abuse and domestic violence. Say whatever you like but at least in the foreseeable future, even with a far-reaching imagination, that kind of thing is still going to occur in a post-revolutionary society.
Will these people necessarily be cops, per se? Idk, not strictly speaking - however to act in the interests of children's welfare there's going to need to be a degree of compulsion and enforcement that is necessarily inherent to this sort of a role. This is going to meet the shallow definition of a cop, like it or not.
(I'm going to skirt around the historical role of settler-colonial genocide and the acts done in the interests of "children's welfare" which were intended to destroy culture and connections to heritage and family etc.)
ACAB has the same energy as people whose politics are hating their boss; under capitalism, bosses are terrible. But bosses of some form are essentially a necessity in a modern, industrialised world; your factory is still going to need a foreman after the revolution.
Is that boss or cop going to have the exact same power, privilege, training, oversight, and function in society after the revolution? I desperately hope not, otherwise something would be going very wrong.
Idk, I just see too much denouncing of the thing rather than investigation into the nature of the thing and how it functions. I see people saying that Stalin was a cop and, as far as I'm concerned, that's a complete cop out 😏
If you want to criticise Stalin, that's fine by me. If you want to be opposed to Stalin, that's fine by me. But don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining - if your best reason for opposing Stalin is because he "was like a cop" then you're engaging in political analogy rather than political analysis and you might as well be telling me that Trump is bad because of all the ways that he's like Voldemort, for all the respect and credibility that you're going to erode by saying such a thing.
In MAREZ the EZLN operates community policing. In Rojava the PKK trains community members to function as police officers. I never see the people whose immediate urge is to denounce cops and "cop-like" figures or societies that have policing apply this same blanket denouncement of the PKK or the EZLN and, curiously enough, whenever I've pressed someone like this on why they aren't taking a "principled" stand against these examples or that of the CNT/FAI during the Spanish Civil War then suddenly all the nuance-cuckoldry comes pouring out of them.
If we can have an earnest discussion about the role and function of policing, the necessity for at least a certain degree of policing, and what shape that might take or would need to take (especially with regards to delimiting powers) then I'm all for it. If it's just going to be an exercise in the other person hypocritically slapping the "cop" label on certain things then denouncing them for being cops and expecting me to enthusiastically agree with them with the threat of slinging political slurs and (typically) ableist insults at me when they're met with my antipathy then, ironically, they're acting very cop-like in their opposition to cops. Or something.
I'm pretty convinced of the fact that leftists who are worth taking seriously (sorry anprims) really do believe in things like vanguardism, the necessity of the state, and the role of things like bosses and police when they're pressed to provide a genuine position outside of sloganeering, it's just that they disagree with stuff like the the roles, the scope, and the timeframes that these things occur within.
Do I love cops? Fuck no.
Am I excusing the role of cops in society today or historically? Fuck no.
Have I nearly gotten myself arrested and involuntarily detained in mental health wards at the times where I've had confrontations with cops? You better believe it.
Imo the point about ACAB isn't supposed to be a political rubric to align your beliefs against, it's supposed to be a response to the "but my uncle is a cop and he's a good guy" and the "look at this cop rescuing these cute little abandoned kittens" kinda shit; nobody is saying that cops can't perform good deeds or that they aren't... let's say sympathetic people. But the role of policing is still rotten to the core as we see it and experience it today. You might be a doctor in the armed forces and you could be "just saving lives", but whose lives are you saving and what system are you supporting by being a doctor in the armed forces? What atrocities are being enabled by your provision of healthcare? Likewise, you can "just be an engine driver" but whose train are you operating, where are the passengers destined, and exactly what fate awaits them when they arrive?
Hence, all cops are bastards.
