[I originally posted this in chapotraphouse, but it was deleted for being “pro-cop” even though that very much wasn’t the case. (I believe PSL was actually involved in organizing the protest if I’m not mistaken.) The mod that deleted it openly broke the sectarian rule too.]
Been seeing a lot of people hating on what the protest marshals did during the pro-Gaza protests at the DNC and I feel they definitely did the right thing. Instigating stuff like going up against the cops under the guise of “revolutionary” action just gets a lot of people arrested and doesn’t accomplish anything.
EDIT: Users who were present at the protests have said, counter to what is claimed in the screenshot, that the protest marshals did NOT call for the police. Thank you for clearing this up, comrades!
Both sides sucked. The planned protest sucked because it was far too passive and the adventurists sucked because they tried to hijack another protest instead of doing their own thing.
The planned protest sucking:
It's not going to accomplish a single thing outside of "raising awareness" for the simple fact that it's not militant enough. One easy litmus test is to ask whether the pigs actually feel threatened by the demonstration and the very easy answer is that they do not feel threatened whatsoever. They see it as easy overtime pay. The pigs are laughing it up to the bank as they cash their fat overtime paychecks.
The adventurists sucking:
It's very obvious they tried hijacking the peaceful demonstration because they lack numbers. They have <30 people, and obviously, you're not going to accomplish much with that little people. That's less than a platoon of troops. This is pathetic in its own way since the adventurists tried to use the peace demonstrators as cannon fodder and when their adventurism inevitably fails because they lack numbers, the adventurists can always quietly slip away as the pigs beat the shit out of the cannon fodder that didn't sign up to be militant.
It's the classic dilemma. The numerous demonstrators lack militancy and the few militants lack numbers.
The goal isn't to get in fights with cops. The goal is to stop the genocide. If getting in fights with cops is necessary to accomplish that, it should be done, but if getting in fights with cops doesn't move the needle much, it's not some intrinsic good we should be doing anyway.
It's also important to think of how you pipeline people into more radical actions. If someone goes to their very first protest expecting a peaceful march, marchers start fighting the police, and that person ends up tear gassed, beaten, and out of a job because they spent time in jail, they might never do anything like that again. You don't throw someone into the deep end if you want to teach them to swim. You have to bring people along step by step, not all at once.
If the ultimate goal is to stop the genocide, then neither side is approaching it correctly. The Zionist entity is an extension of the US. It's pretty much the 51st state and I would argue it's more important to the US than some states like Montana. So, demonstrating/doing adventurism for the sake of getting the US political class to abandon a de facto US state that they consider more valuable to the US project than Montana is a complete dead end.
Palestine Action shows us the way forward. They don't bother with demonstrating in front of Parliament or their inbred German king. They simply break into factories to smash the drones and vandalize bank offices that closely collaborate with the Zionist entity. I don't think we should completely copy them, but their strategy deserves close study. For one, demonstrations should be focused on the site of production and distribution of weapons (eg factories, ports, railway lines) rather than the site of the political class. A worker strike can shut down a port preventing weapons from being shipped to the Zionist entity. We don't have to imagine it because it has already happened before. Anti-Zionist demonstrators along with sympathetic port workers actually got a port shut down at Oakland. This is great and the way forward.
I think people need to recognize that the US political class is irredeemably Zionist and move forward from there.
Youre acting like the people that organize these arent also doing other stuff while acting above it all.
I read the phrase "51st state" here as the U.S. cares about Israel more than their colony Puerto Rico, and I think that works pretty well
fighting cops is an intrinsic good if you win
Define winning against the cops
break stuff and get away with it
...
I just don't understand why the marshals actively stopped them and helped the cops ID them instead of keeping them away from the rest of the protest. It's all about the diversity of tactics for these organizers until someone tries to do something effective, and if there wasn't active peace policing or infantile organizers "leading" maybe there could've been more genuine unrest that was much more unpredictable to the DNC attendees at the very least. You are right in that the action is adventurist but I have so much more empathy with them than the organizers that think peaceful protests are anything but a spit in the face to the gravity of the situation
oh my god they actually snitched? fucking worms. luckily now that the unseemly "adventurist" element has been quashed, the fascists will have no choice but to listen to our chanting!
The marshals didn't help the cops ID people
Kettling and restricting the movement of protesters in the direct line of site of kkkops does help them ID you, and shit like this would be truly unacceptable to a marshal trying to keep comrades safe
Hold on I've got to go find those goalposts you moved
We're also equating "hey don't fight the cops at our peaceful protest" to kettling, now.
Helping the cops id people is not an incorrect statement though? They're helping the cops contain the protest, letting them stand back and do their job where theyre inevitably IDing people especially the people the marshalls are physically singling out for doing "bad protesting"??? Shows a lot you care more about the technical definition of ID-ing than the overall evidence towards collaboration with fascist cops
Yeah, I'll call out fedjacketing when I see it. If you disagree with the tactics you can just say so rather than trying to smear people
It's not smearing, I'm calling out individual actions that are collaborative with cops. I genuinely believe it's because americans are generally fascists with more sympathy towards cops and peace keepers than the victims of genocide and those that know we need to do much more to stop it. Also, as a movement with a history of infiltration and co-optation when did you get the idea in your head that fedjacketing is a bad thing?
You've indicated that if you feel a tactic is counterproductive then it's the same as collaboration with the police. This is not a view to be taken seriously
Is there evidence of this? There's a vague line at the end of this screenshot about "participants and marshals called out for cops to intervene," but that's all we have here, and it's a big leap to read that as "they helped the cops ID people."
Sorry for the Twitter link but this is also predictable as shit. Every protest where someone can yell at a cop to "come get" someone and not get thrown out at the MINIMUM for it is a controlled resistance rally with more fascists than not. Seen this happen a lot at encampments with unelected leaders propped up by orgs like the palestinian youth movement and the tahrir coalition where they literally work with police while spouting "We keep us safe" as if they know what it means
It's hard to make out what's happening or being said there, but the person that link refers to -- the guy in the baseball helmet, who supposedly says "come get" someone, to someone (I can't really hear it or see who it was yelled at) -- doesn't have a yellow vest on, so I don't think he's one of the marshals.
Even taking exactly what that link alleges as the truth (that a marshal, not the baseball helmet guy, asked the cops to "come get" a protester), that's not helping cops ID anyone. It's not giving a name or any other identifying information, and the cops can already see the person because it's in public.
We should be very deliberate about accusing other leftists of things like this. We shouldn't be stretching the facts even a little against each other.
I do not have solidarity with Amerikkkan "leftists" whatever that term means and I sure as hell will criticize them for the endless list of things they do because they were brought up in the fourth fucking reich. This person asked the armed vanguard of genocide to take a man trying to do something the protest should be about and the marshall didn't throw that person out. The marshall and seemingly majority of the protesters felt closer aligned with the kop than the actionist, and there's nothing more symbolic of amerikkkan "leftism" than that
So we're agreeing that the marshals did not help the cops ID anyone in this video, right? That's what we're talking about.
As for the marshals not throwing that guy out: is that even possible in this large of a crowd? It's not a club with a door 40 feet away. I'm guessing the marshals were trained/instructed to keep the peace, not police everything every random person was shouting.
Again, kettling protesters is a tactic the police use for the purpose (among many other things) of restricting your movement to get pics/identifying information to ID you and doing that to actionists in front of kops is going to produce some door knocks in the future. Regardless the definition of what is and isn't "helping IDing" we might disagree on fine, I feel like I've seen this lead to investigations enough to say that but whatever.
That aside police collaboration is a theme considering the statement that a protester made as well and the fact they felt comfortable to say it (with good reason it seems). That person is a pro-cop snitch that actively is posing a danger to a comrade, what should the purpose of a marshall be other than to keep fascists out? The answer is to be the peace police clearly and prevent actions like this in a way that we'll argue about "the right way to protest" here instead of rightfully blaming the kkkops and everything they represent.
The heart of what I'm trying to say is this, if this kind of peaceful protest isn't producing any material change and is actively preventing more radical actions from occurring, maybe it, its marshalls and organizers, and fascist attendees are doing more to prevent the movement from progressing than helping it.