(I apologize in advance if talking about the podcast is discouraged. I don't know if that's a joke or if most hexbears feel that way). But anyway, next month marks the two-year anniversary of George Floyd's awful murder. Listening to the show in the summer of 2020, and later reading some stray commentary on this site, it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests. But idk, is that fair to say? I believe they participated in some marches in NYC, but I also remember Matt saying that "defund the police" was dead-on-arrival as a slogan, because cops will always be around as long as capitalism exists. I also remember there being a pretty rancid take about "working class" cops in a Taibbi episode, as well as an episode that dunked on a racial sensitivity/workplace training book. Fair enough about the capitalism opinion, and the book, which was no doubt written by a rich neolib that lacked any material analysis. I understand that CTH is a news commentary/comedy/dirtbag show co-hosted by white people, so it's not going to be the best resource on racial theory. I also understand that a big part of CTH is entertainment. But I'm curious if you have thoughts about Chapo's reaction to the 2020 protests. And thanks for sharing them.
it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests
Tbf as an active organizer of some of the actions in Los Angeles, the protestors whiffed it harder on the protests.
They had the opportunity of a fucking lifetime, their fucking energy was so incredible in those first few weeks that politicians were drafting legislation to placate these people without any concessions of voting for some demon who wouldn't follow through. We had an overwhelming amount of the country in support of burning down that police station ffs. If the fucking focus and energy would've been kept tight and consistent there would've been real fucking change.
But what happened? "Leftists" and Libs basically sabotaged the movement without realizing it. They decided to "branch out" in terms of protest topics from a very tight topic of police brutality to everything and anything even tangentially related to oppression, started tone policing the shit out of eachother for everything and anything, started shitting on leaders of orgs because they wanted to have leadership of things without any of the responsibility etc. We had fucking dumbfuck insane people like Tia Turner actively shitting things up by constantly picking fights and blacklisting protestors/orgs she had a personal beef with and even actively dismantled an entire protest coalition because of her own paranoia against one of the leaders of the orgs. I still don't know why to this day why so many "leftist" protestors and activists engaged with this objectively spiteful and destructive person and why they still follow her around.
But nothing will beat RevCom in 2020 nearly killing people in Hollywood by making them march (along the sidewalk) in 107 F heat (while giving out nothing but mini-bottles of lukewarm water) while shushing people when they tried to say fuck the police next to the police station and taking 3+ hours to march 10 city blocks (It took 15 minutes to walk back after they tried talking about Bob Avakian or whatever). They had all the most useless white people there to speak about the most inane of topics (No extincition rebellion I dont want to hear about how people should commit suicide to save the planet, thanks) the dumbest of tactics (an anti-Trump protest in Hollywood?) and the stupidest of arguments (people as a whole refusing to coalesce around one direction and one org and instead forming 10,000 individual mini-orgs of 1-3 people).
Then we had fucking Libs. Oh man the fucking Libs. Who would waltz in to groups and protests with expressed radical goals and decide that akshually guyz the biggest threat rn is Donald Fucking Drumpf, and we should be doing voter outreach in.....California. These were people with more time and money than anyone else and had the luxury of zipping around from protest to protest kvetching everything to their personal neuroses, demanding stupid shit like starting "conversations" with the cops to try to ??? because they didn't like the idea of being hostile to cops and instead we should be forming "dialogues". Which ultimately was turned into pro-cop PR stunts that the police unions milked the shit out of.
The movement blinked and faltered and the end result was that the brokers of power dismissed their impact 4 months into the protests if that. They thought for a moment it was a genuine moment they would have to concede to the demands of a popular uprising. But then the protestors showed their ass, demonstrated they had no fucking clue what they were doing, constantly conceded on ideology and material grounds, and worst of all even acted in the service of the very people they were supposed to be against.
Its very hard for me to ascertain what material or political changes the protests and uprisings accomplished besides the reactionary backlash that followed in the summer after 2020, where even supposed elected "allies" in the Squad are voting for police budget increases, and just about every city in the USA has increased police budgets while spreading the lie that they were actually decreased.
They had the chance of a fucking decade and they punted it to the opposing team
I remember the lib-ification and co-opting of the protests happening in real time. Fucking wild to see.
By the second weekend protestors were taking knees with cops.
Just so you know, this post was the final straw in making me believe in vanguards. I knew it was bad but I haven’t seen a retrospective from a leftist pov before. Shit
Keep participating in orgs, its important that theres human to human contact at the very least, but be there as an immune system response to lib shit (either kick them out or educate them about what shit is good and what shit is counterproductive)
Oh yeah I’ve got local projects I’m not about to drop. Community building and all that
This is exactly how I felt about it. Podcasts are really unimportant.
These were people with more time and money than anyone else and had the luxury of zipping around from protest to protest kvetching everything to their personal neuroses, demanding stupid shit like starting “conversations” with the cops to try to
I remember watching Robert Evans' stream of the first couple nights of the Portlantd protests. Leading a crowd of 15k high energy protests to the police HQ and then shushing them and calming them down so that you can shout through the fence with your megaphone, asking for a cop to come down and "have a dialogue". Luckily there were plenty who broke off and ratcheted things up, but what a fucking waste, they could have at least had a "peaceful" but high energy march around town or something.
Apparently the guy with the megaphone was reportedly mixed up with a cop org (like youth outreach or something) as part of a reduced or community service sentence or something, so there were definitely suspicious ties there.
lmao, I remember that dollar store DMX megaphone guy from Portland. He was always there to hijack the protests when they got big enough.
nearly killing people in Hollywood by making them march (along the sidewalk) in 107 F heat (while giving out nothing but mini-bottles of lukewarm water)
I pretty much gave up on even symbolic participation in street marches after attending a few where the temperature was at or near one hundred and few if any of the well meaning people thought to bring water. Nothing is going to come from marching if people can't even think far enough ahead to look after hydration.
The way the march was set up is that we met up in front of the Hollywood and Highland Center on Hollywood Blvd.
We were told to come by around 12pm (in the middle of goddamn heatwave in summer) and were told that the speakers would be talking around then, so we showed up about 20 min early. The speakers didn't start until fucking 12:45 PM. The speakers were an embarrassing array of extinction rebellion nerds telling people about self suicide, RevCom weirdos talking about the immortal science of Bob Avakian, and a bunch of Libs talking about the cheeto in the dang white house.
Finally after what felt an hour we started the march. In which they forced us to walk on the right side of the street to allow street traffic to go through and as close to the sidewalk as possible :). Didn't want to be a bother afterall it was a Sunday and people were having brunch! Problem with this was, the march organizers decided to randomnly and for no reason just stop and wait for no reason or explanation.
Our ultimate destination was to get to De Longpre Park, which ordinarily would take maybe 15 minutes walking. It took us three hours. Oh and the fucking protest chants they were fucking AWFUL. The worst one was.
Stranger Danger! There's a fascist in the white house!
But it was like one of 5 they kept doing (while shushing people who said ACAB and Fuck the Police and Fuck 12)
Finally we get to the goddamn park and Im suffering from heatstroke and on the verge of fainting. Where they expected us to sit down and listen to more speeches about removing Donald Trump from the White House.
Me, my then BF, his sister and his friend went "aw hell nah" and fucking left. Took us 15 minutes to get back to the car.
this is great insight, and yeah looking back, the legacy of that movement is massively compromised by the lock-step increases in police funding. If you ever felt like writing a piece for like Truthdig or something on the squandered potential and liberal hijacking of the 2020 energy, I'd read that
How do I write for them? Ive never written a piece and I'd probably just need help not being all rambly
Ivy
That'd be awesome! From what I've seen, all manner of newsy web outlets welcome fresh content. I don't know if you actually want to do Truthdig, but I just looked at their site. If you check under their "contact us" page it provides some details on submissions. It looks like "columns" are discouraged, but "articles" are encouraged. I think you could make the case that yours is an "article" since you witnessed all of that stuff, although maybe "feature story" would be appropriate. Anyway, they also accept articles in "pitch form," so you could contact before even writing it. The site doesn't mention anything about compensation though, so you may want to check on that. You should get some money for your labor. Anyway, if writing an article on this is something you're interested in, go for it! You could wait a couple weeks and pitch it as a reflection on the second anniversary of the uprising. (The editor(s) should help with structure too btw).
Did a "protest march" from an HBCU to a more central place and the fucking cops blocked off the entire street for everyone and it was so fucking lame. Just a month or two before people were really pissed and the energy just dissipated into lib pacificsm and compliance. I was so mad after that event, I knew we lost and nothing would change.
I blame the leftists for not keeping the libs out or at the very least telling them their shit won't be tolerated
I blame libs for ruining shit for everyone
You can't "keep the libs out". There's simply not enough leftists to get shit done, we need the libs.
Then prepare to get your shit co-opted and defanged if you can't keep them from fucking shit up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
the right hates us because gommulism killed a hundred gorillion, we hate ourselves because we know we can't even notch one measly city council member
idk about that. Amber was the only Chapo in that episode who was a problem and she disappeared not too long after. Taibbi hasn't been back.
At the height of BLM protests their scepticism about the movement's ability to change anything outside of destroying a couple of statues was considered outrageous, but now, looking back, seems like they've been vindicated.
No, fuck that. Those protests showed that once enough of us get together the police can't stop us. It planted a seed in peoples minds and I don't think it was for nothing.
Tell me the sight of a burning police station doesn't inspire you.
That's exactly why their takes were outrageous. Most leftists felt elated at the prospects, many were saying that we were seeing the birth of "a real movement" in real time.
Oooooh I see what you were trying to say. Lol, sorry.
But yeah, nothing to say it still won't come back as a full on movement, it wasn't that long ago and weirder shit has happened.
You could say I have high high hopes for a living- oww who shot me?
The sight of that burning police station REALLY inspired me. But when I saw it, I thought it was going to be the first of many. It was the first and the last station that got burned down.
I will say this as someone who was theoretically on the ground in Minneapolis, is that the movement lacked any real coherency or organization with labor or other leftist movements. It had the strength of being grassroots and spontaneous, and the weakness of being grassroots and spontaneous. While I wouldn't say it was a bad thing, it certainly wasn't going to be a change in the status quo and the narrative around it was far too disjointed to have a meaningful impact on anyone but the local community members involved, many of whom are arrested with extraordinary long sentences hanging over their heads. It was a good call very grounded in historicity and actual analysis, something they learned from the loss around Bernie.
Overall having Taibbi and Amber on was weird choice and I wasn't a big fan, but I mostly just skipped that.
There needs to be an org ready to sieze the moment and guide the grassroots movements to power (while earning their trust), a vanguard, if you will.
Revolutionary preconfiguration is a term I've heard for it before.
It was a mess in Minneapolis in part because most of the major orgs that were organizing protests, like CUAPB, are collaborationist. The actual radical orgs tended to also be smart enough to have good opsec, which also means they couldn't have a real widespread and visible presence
have fewer than 10 active members is opsec of a kind
I mean, there are groups where that applies. There's also groups that are larger, about which I'm not going to say more here
someone who was theoretically on the ground in Minneapolis
Cool, I watched woke too
probably not very positive - most of those guys are pretty much literally anarcho-capitalists
if you done a trade union, you get a visit from a sicario
if you done a land defender, you get a mass grave
if you done a journalism, god help you
they're openly not abolitionists, and i think they should be, but i can see why they don't have much faith in contemporary abolitionism when so much of it seems to consist of twitter sloganeering and pretending to do the reading without any plan or on-the-ground organizing, and when those elements of the BLM movement which did achieve success were co-opted by liberal peace politics before they got any airplay. if and when a real radical abolitionism takes form, it won't need the approval of podcasters.
i thought the taibbi episode was pretty funny because you could tell Will was having a meet-your-heroes moment and didn't realize he'd be such a dumbass. like he kept trying to get him to agree that worrying about cancel culture was stupid and taibbi kept "agreeing" that cancel culture was stupid and needed to stop.
Yeah I definitely think most people recognize they're just a source of entertainment for some. I've got about 9 podcasts that get auto downloaded and sometimes I'll listen to an episode but I feel like I rarely finish it. They get some cool interviews sometimes. I mainly stay to hear Matt unleash some shit cause he cracks me up and honestly says a lot of true shit.
I have the worse memory so it's hard for me to recall most of their coverage of the protests but I don't think there was anything flagrant about them. There is a lot of throw away comments on those pods that I don't really think too much about. I've kinda accepted pretty much everyone in media is gonna end up saying some shit I don't like or agree with and unless it's a constant thing that becomes annoying I just let it go. They do commonly link and/or interview mutual aid groups which is cool. I know they did that a few times with bail relief during the protests
thanks for this balanced take. This approach sounds healthy. It's true that if you're in the media glare long enough you'll say something wack; and even short of that, there's plenty of leftist infighting, unfortunately, so you can't please everyone
If I recall their major take was " it's rad hope they don't die"
And then it was rad and they died. Seems pretty close to spot on.
Between the neoliberal establishemt and covid they never got to a stage where they could prefigure and structural changes like the panthers did. If trump won they might have done some material good though
I feel like their thing is just always trying to show that they are the "most" populist, and most edgy. Sometimes that yields good takes, sometimes it yields godawful takes.
