Re: <nettime> what exactly is breaking?

[EduAustin Alliance <eduatx@gmail.com>]

Sorry to be overly Marxist about it, but here's my .02

--------------

The case in Minneapolis, the killing of George Floyd, was the result of a
bad apple - a story of one officer who took things too far, and the spoiled
bushel around him that enabled his crime.

That's not the case in Austin. As a liberal city in a conservative state,
the activists in Austin are very active and integrated with the community.
There's well over 50 protests every year in Austin. I've personally spoken
one-on-one with the Chief of Police on several occasions, as well as the
head of Austin's Police Oversight Committee and most of City Council.

They have their problems. Just a few months ago, Michael Ramos was shot and
killed for non-compliance, but for the most part, Austin doesn't have any
more bad apples. They've already been weened from the Austin Police
Department.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2020-04-27/activists-call-for-firing-of-apd-leadership-in-wake-of-officer-involved-shooting/

All the officers I've known were reasonable people- no more racist than
anyone else. The activists in Austin know this too. Most of us are on a
first name basis with many cops because we always see each other at
protests and City Council meetings.

So then I ask you, why would the Austin activists, primarily organized by
local churches, with a long history of peaceful protests, and a direct
relationship with the local police department, burn cars and loot stores? I
personally only saw 1 car burned and 1 store looted, but still, why? Was it
those "outside agitators" we keep hearing about on main-stream media?

No. Not at all. Allow me one quick story to explain why.

A handful of years ago, a buddy of mine and I were hanging out in the
kitchen of his house, which has a window that looks out onto the street,
and this car gets pulled over right across the street. The weird thing was
that the officers immediately pull the people out of the car, a
20-something black man and a 20-something black women. The cops separate
the two kids and start questioning them. We turned off the indoor lights so
they couldn't tell we were watching. We watched because the cops never
would have treated us that way.

Over 45 minutes later, the cops abruptly drove away, leaving the two kids
standing by their car. We took some bottles of water out to them to make
sure they were okay. They were dazed. They had no idea why they were pulled
over or why they were questioned. They were simply on their way home, but
the message was clear- don't take that way home.

The Cherrywood neighborhood where this happened was a hispanic neighborhood
long ago. That started to change about 35 years ago. These days it's almost
all white families. The property taxes have made the schools better, and
that in turn was raising the property values. Gentrification was taking
hold. These two kids weren't pulled over because they're black- they were
pulled over because they're poor. Class-based profiling overlaps with
racial profiling and the profiles add up.

This is how it happened. The Citizens said to City Council, "we want to be
rich!" because that's what the television told them to say. City Council
then hired a "Business Improvement Manager" with an MBA from the University
of Texas. The Business Manager looked at the local real estate market and
provided general guidelines to the Police Chief about how to treat those
neighborhoods. The Police Chief then translated the guidelines into orders
for the Police Officers. The Officers in the streets knew nothing of the
economics. They weren't trying to be racist or classist. They were doing
their job.

In the case of Cherrywood, a neighborhood on verge of gentrification, the
order was "make sure no one's there that isn't supposed to be there", which
got translated into "poor kids in a junky car should be told to take a
different way home."

On the other hand, East Riverside, where Michael Ramos was killed, is
predominately minority. The Police arrange their patrol routes to patrol
that neighborhood less, crime goes up and response times go down. In a
press interview, the Chief of Police said that the lower response times
were due to the arrangement of the highways. No one asked any more
questions, and East Riverside's real estate market continues to stay
depressed. Again, the Officers are simply doing their job.

These realities form a low-level aggression that all minorities in the USA
experience. It's a form of psychological warfare that we, the USA, use the
police force to enact, on our own citizen, in order to preserve our system
of class. That's why you see Trump stirring the pot on racial issues. Race
continues to be a class-based narrative. Trump is, and represents, big
money. Sure, people are dying, the US government is going broke, and small
business is hurting- none of that matters as long as the stock market stays
even.

Deleuze wrote that capitalism creates "decoded flows." The riots are those
same old flows re-emerging with new codes.

On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 3:42 PM Kurtz, Steven <sjkurtz@buffalo.edu> wrote:

> Brian, I have long admired your optimism and fighting spirit, but
> I just find it difficult to think that structural change is coming
> soon. Regarding the George Floyd case, we haven't even been able
> to get the accessories to murder charged and the murderer is miles
> from conviction. Given the autopsy discrepancies, I think we can
> assume the police shenanigans have already begun. But putting the
> the institutional racism of the US legal system aside (which won't
> change in our life time), and turning to the question of electoral
> politics, I do agree with you that we need to build a voting bloc
> that will put Trump out of office. And I believe this can happen.
> The alliance is being formed, and we have a good shot at getting
> Trump out. I share your optimism here. However, I have to point out
> that Biden is literally and explicitly running on a no structural
> change platform. (Sanders was the change candidate, and he's done.)
> The democratic congress supports Biden's reform approach. Trump is
> wo rse, but the Dems are not much better on climate change--they
> like to give it lip service and put band-aids where they can, but
> that is about it. They have already given massive corporate welfare
> to the extraction industries (they are not trying to eliminate
> them, nor are they proposing funding for sustainable energy). They
> agree with Biden that answer to the healthcare crisis is to tweak
> Obamacare. I could go on, but for brevity's sake will no.
>

<...>

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http://bishopz.com

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