A call went out on the neighborhood Whatsapp this evening that a stalker was on some lady's front lawn bothering her, so a bunch of people went to sit out on their porches with baseball bats until the cops came and shoo'd him away. (Which was probably the best outcome for the stalker).
Do y'all have any good advice to deal with stalkers? It's a constant problem, and the state's response is more or less to just let it go until someone get's seriously injured or killed. I'm curious what anarchists and community defense groups and stuff have come up with to deal with these creeps.
Pure bullshittery, but I image that stalking behavior is enabled by relative social anonimity, aka know one knows who their neighbors are, and lack of consequences. If some dude can sneak in to an apartment building because no one knows that he's a stalker who isn't supposed to be there, and if no-one will intervene in disputes then it's easier to do stalker shit. If a person is alone in a community and can't call on a bunch of friends to show up and break a stalker's legs it's a lot easier for stalkers to do stalker shit.
And the legal system doesn't provide any protection from stalkers. They won't arrest people for stalking, and if you get your friends to proactively go out and beat the shit out of the stalker they're the ones who would get arrested. The state protects the assailant right up until they actually murder a woman.
And that goes back to a lot of other shit. Like the old idea that rape is committed by stangers, which I think we all know is bullshit. The state and society's refusal to treat domestic violence as a problem or guarantee women medical, housing, and food security. Like the most straightforward way to end domestic violence is to ensure that women can leave their abusers and not lose housing, food, medicine, and their kids.
That's a good point. Dealing with this kind of problem in a system which actively protects the person doing the stalking (or whatever other bad activity) is a completely distinct challenge compared to dealing with the same problem in a system lacking cops altogether. And I think @gcc's comment is a good example of the sort of approach we'd have to take within our system until we can build a better system.