kete

https://roarmag.org/essays/1877-railroad-strike-modern-police/ by one of my favorite academics: Robert Ovetz who is also popular among anarchists, and that's how I discovered his writings.

The police has a “long history of being used for class repression”.

“based on the third chapter of Ovetz’ book When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to 1921 (Haymarket 2019)”

“The earliest police forces in the United States have their origins in militias that were used as a weapon to enforce racialized capitalism by suppressing rebellious slaves and native peoples. often informal, privately funded and sporadically trained

“the police were reorganized, managed and equipped with newly designed technology in response to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877....

“a struggle against the police must be a struggle against capitalism.”

“in the summer of 1877” – “Triggered by wage and staffing cuts, self-organized workers without a formal union to represent them spread their struggle to many railroad companies across the entire country.

“In response to brutal attacks by local police and elite-run militias, the workers launched an armed struggle, evoking comparisons to the 1871 Paris Commune and expectations of revolution. the workers ... even controlled the cities of St. Louis and East St. Louis.” But the workers were unable “to expand and sustain the strike, take over and run the railroads themselves and adequately defend themselves against state repression”. This prompted “a complete overhaul [“reorganization”] of local police and the transformation of militias [“both volunteer and state militias”] into the state-run and -funded National Guard we have today.

“police work was Taylorized* by establishing a clear chain of command, assigning patrolmen to rationalized beats and police wagons to be used as weapons used to break up crowds and carry off arrestees.” “Police professionalization is ... one small part of the total process of rationalization under advanced capitalism.” (“Sidney Harring’s classic book Policing a Class Society”)

“Throughout the 1840s and 50s, there was a wave of ethnic and racial riots precipitated by the anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and xenophobic Know Nothing movement’s control over local cities and police departments, which they used to stoke ethnic and racial hatred and terrorize immigrant communities.

“Between 1830–65, close to a 100 riots [(probably of the uprising variety)] took place across major US cities. stoked a wave of fear among the ruling class that the ... police systems were unprepared to control or repress a growing working class”. In “Boston, ... police were organized into a full-time office of professionals in 1837 after three earlier riots and criticism from the city’s elites. under state control in 1885 ... the police were forced to protect property during strikes. cuts to the Chicago and Pittsburgh police departments, for example, during the depressions of 1870s and 1890s left them incapable of defending property and elite neighborhoods during the strikes.”

After the railroad strike, “In St. Louis, the police force was enlarged, a National Guard armory was built and the Lucas Market, where strikers had assembled, was demolished as part of the process of reorganizing public space to facilitate the deployment of police and military force.

“a substantial growth in the size of forces”

“the state “employed the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital by increasing the degree of exploitation of labor.”” (Marx, Capital Volume I) “The industrialization of policing corresponded to the prerogatives of industrial capital to control workers by preventing disruption and restoring control.” “individual capitalists’ adaptations to the class struggle needed to be rationally organized and disciplined, a function beyond any individual capitalist but appropriate for the capitalist state.” (Harring) “socialized policing as a public function of government paid for by public expense rather than by elites alone. the wage and property taxes levied on workers paid for their own domination by the police.

“Between the 1880s and 90s police departments were restructured with a new division of labor that mimicked the military.

“In Pittsburgh, the defeat of the Philadelphia militia during the 1877 strike prompted elites to focus on improving the local police force.” Police “were more flexible and mobile because they did not move in military formation, had experience with crowd control, operated under local political control, were locals familiar with the local terrain, worked full-time and belonged to an institution that emphasized obedience and loyalty to capital despite their recruitment from the working class.

“innovative management techniques ... allowed [the police] to be monitored with the newly invented telegraph and telephone.... city-wide coordination ensured the police could be mobilized rapidly and in large numbers. The police call box was invented in 1880 in Chicago, modeled after the fire alarm telegraph installed in the homes and businesses of the rich. It had three mechanisms to sign a simple short message — riot, robbery, send help — with the pull of a lever, an alarm bell that would ring each box to alert men on the beat to call in for a message, and a two-way conversation between the officer and switchboard. Call boxes were installed by the rich for $25 in 1881, the equivalent of two weeks’ pay for a worker. As Harring observed, this “clearly shows the class basis of the innovation....”

“The signal system and new horse-drawn patrol wagons now allowed a dozen or more officers to be put on the scene in a few minutes compared to one hour under the previous system which required running about town to round up a force before marching on the scene. The patrol wagon became a symbol of intimidation and power, making unruly crowds give way at their approach. Wagons were used as weapons, slamming them into crowds to break them up.... made policing a productive industry in the service of the ruling class.

“social control functions ... intimidated and coerced burgeoning urban populations and dampened collective action. to protect strikebreakers, break up meetings, marches and pickets, keep workplaces open”.

“The Coal and Iron Police were used to replace local police in strikes where the latter might be too sympathetic to strikers. Portrayed in the 1970 film The Molly Maguires” (apparently available at https://invidio.us/watch?v=6P_BdPYmRPg) The state paid the Coal & Iron Police.

“the reorganization of the police alone failed to realize the necessary discipline and control that would prevent further insurgencies. class domination and control ... was paired with the courts, military, welfarism, arbitration and the new division of labor. “‘progressive’ or ‘reformist’ methods of controlling the class struggle, now identified with the welfare state.”” (Harring) “This necessitated new sources of tax revenue that corresponded with the permanent establishment of the federal income tax in the Sixteenth Amendment.

“Racial supremacy plays a central role in policing the working class....

“We should be vigilant about the efforts of non-profit advocacy groups to co-opt and redirect the struggle against the police into reforming the police. Efforts to make the police less discriminatory in their application of their oppressive power will leave the institution as a tool of class domination firmly in place. These groups have failed to achieve even the most non-threatening changes to police policies and practices, such as banning choke and carotid² holds or simply enforcing the laws against police violence that already exist.

“Previous efforts to “diversify” the police and require that they wear cameras have clearly not blunted their power. And as the aftermath of the 1877 strike shows, reorganizing the police to make them more accountable will also likely result in making them a more effective force of repression.

“Because the police are essential to control and suppress class struggle, efforts to abolish it are inseparable from the struggle to abolish capitalism. By refusing to drive anti-police violence protesters to jail, the Minneapolis and New York City bus drivers demonstrated how demands to defund and abolish the police are integral to a larger class struggle. Without further similar efforts such demands will only succeed in putting a friendlier face on the end of the club wielded against the working class.”

* “Taylorism definition is – a factory management system developed in the late 19th century to increase efficiency by evaluating every step in a manufacturing process and breaking down production into specialized repetitive tasks.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Taylorism Sep 9, 2020

² carotid – “Either of the two major arteries, one on each side of the neck...” (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/carotid Sep 9, 2020)

“they are referred to as “reactionaries.” right-wing intellectuals are mainly there to react to ideas put forward by the Left.

“the role of a radical scholar is to “... reconstruct stone by stone the institutions which used to unite [people].”

“even capitalism is ultimately founded on communism (“mutual aid”), even if it’s a communism it does not acknowledge; how communism is not an abstract, distant ideal, impossible to maintain, but a lived practical reality we all engage in daily, to different degrees, and that even factories could not operate without it — even if much of it operates on the sly, between the cracks, or shifts, or informally, or in what’s not said, or entirely subversively. It’s become fashionable lately to say that capitalism has entered a new phase in which it has become parasitical of forms of creative cooperation, largely on the internet. This is nonsense. It has always been so.

“Instead of examining how the relations of hierarchy and exploitation are reproduced, refused, and entangled with relations of mutual aid, how relations of care become continuous with relations of violence, but nonetheless hold together systems of violence so that they don’t entirely fall apart, both traditional Marxism and contemporary social theory have stubbornly dismissed pretty much anything suggestive of generosity, cooperation, or altruism as some kind of bourgeois illusion. Conflict and egoistic calculation proved to be more interesting than “union.”

“Those involved in collective projects of sociology of freedom and jineoloji* have indeed begun to “reconstruct stone by stone the institutions which used to unite” people and struggles. mutual aid is invoked in migrant solidarity mobilizations in Greece....

“that old “despiser of law and private property” ... changed the face of science in ways that continue to affect us today. Kropotkin’s rejection of both capitalism and bureaucratic socialism, his predictions of where the latter might lead, have been vindicated time and time again. The only viable alternative to capitalist barbarism is stateless socialism.... To create a new world, we can only start by rediscovering what is and his always been right before our eyes.”

https://truthout.org/articles/david-graeber-left-us-a-parting-gift-his-thoughts-on-kropotkins-mutual-aid/ thanks to https://www.anarchistagency.com/critical-voices/andrej-grubacic-david-graeber-left-us-a-parting-gift-his-thoughts-on-kropotkins-mutual-aid/

* “Jineology, the science of women, or women's science, is a form of feminism, of gender equality, advocated by Abdullah Öcalan, the representative leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the broader Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) umbrella.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jineology Sep 7, 2020)

“unions representing millions across several ... sectors [teachers, autoworkers, truck drivers and clerical staff, among others]

“amid calls for concrete measures that address racial injustice

“to escalate protest tactics to force local and federal lawmakers to take action on policing reform and systemic racism. the walkouts ... would last for as long as needed.

““The status quo — of police killing Black people, of armed white nationalists killing demonstrators, of millions sick and increasingly desperate — is clearly unjust, and it cannot continue,”” wrote “several branches of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and affiliates of the National Education Association.

“In July, organized labor staged a daylong strike with workers from the service industry, fast-food chains and the gig economy to call out the lack of coronavirus pandemic protections for essential workers, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

“Now, in the wake of the August shooting of Jacob Blake, ... the union leaders say they are following the lead of professional athletes who last week staged walkouts over the shooting. Basketball, baseball and tennis league games had to be postponed. Some athletes resumed game play only after having talks with league officials over ways to support the push for policing reforms and to honor victims of police and vigilante violence.

““They remind us that when we strike to withhold our labor, we have the power to bring an unjust status quo to a grinding halt....”” https://apnews.com/02da00cb921ec61a69d8a30c9ff56244

Members of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) discovered and reported several vulnerabilities in a widespread cloud system for hospitality companies. Several million sensitive data records were visible in corona lists and reservations. The database went back up to ten years. The cloud service has been informed and has eliminated the weaknesses according to its own information. The CCC recommends avoiding cloud solutions and advises collecting data where it is needed – in the restaurants.

The Chaos Emergency Response Team (CERT) is known to many as the medical and fire protection team at CCC events. But even when there are no events, CERT is always committed to the security of its surroundings.

Digital corona lists

During a joint restaurant visit, members of the CERT were asked to register on a digital “Corona list”. The host restaurateurs apparently wanted to make the mandatory data collection modern and uncomplicated – with the help of cloud software.

Their full-bodied promises about the security of the recorded data aroused suspicion and altruism in the CERT team. As expected, the system had an acute need for medical and fire protection measures by special forces from the CCC.

Over 87,000 corona data records and 5.4 million reservations

Various weaknesses made it possible to access a total of 87,313 corona contact surveys from 180 restaurants that actively used the system*.

In the affected system, however, not only corona lists, but also reservations, orders and cash register sales were saved. The cloud service advertises that it processes over 96 million euros in sales per month from 7.7 million customers and 600,000 reservations via the system*. Personal data of visitors is mainly recorded when making reservations and corona registrations.

Overall, access to 4.8 million personal data records from over 5.4 million reservations was possible, as confirmed by the cloud service*.

Data goes back over a decade

The CERT was astonished to find that personal data is stored in the system, some of which go back a whole decade. The cloud service sees itself as a “processor” and places the responsibility for deletion with the restaurateurs. In turn, they often didn't seem to be aware of this and understandably trusted the full-service cloud.

Multiple vulnerabilities

Lack of rights management

A faulty check of the access rights enabled full administrative access to all data stored in the system to be obtained in no time at all. Other errors in the API enabled users without special rights to access sensitive data that was not intended for your eyes. For example, Restaurant A was able to access the Corona data from Restaurant B.

Insufficiently protected passwords

Inadequately protected passwords could also be called up using a simple API request. The CCC's disaster control not only noticed hashes but also passwords in plain text. A modern hashing method was used for newer accounts. Nevertheless, over 25% of the passwords could have been recovered from their hashes in a sample. Trivial passwords like “1234” indicated the lack of an adequate password policy.

The risk of poorly protected passwords extends beyond the service concerned, because users often tend to use the same password for several accounts.

Generous ordering system

Have you ever waited in vain for the food you ordered in the past? Or did you get a spontaneous pleasure in a corner bar in Hamburg with 42 liters of beer? Maybe a Brazilian teenage girl just enjoyed the open API ... It made it possible without any further obstacles,

• to see the menus of all restaurants and thus
• initiate or cancel orders for third parties

Of course, bypassing all the restrictions set. Worldwide, limitless service!

Fast response from the cloud provider

All vulnerabilities found were confirmed by the CERT members Sophie, Martin, cwoomio, deinkoks, Lady_Raven, Metal_Warrior, Waveshaper, bubbling and cbro documented in writing and notified to the gastronovi operator with a request for rectification.

In a swift reaction, gastronovi confirmed all reported weaknesses and began immediate treatment. On the advice of the CCC, the immediate life-saving measures are now also followed by a detailed system diagnosis by trained specialists.

CCC advises against using digital “corona lists”

According to gastronovi, the reported weaknesses have now been cured. Similar weaknesses have also been found in the systems of other cloud services.

“Denken first, digital second”, comments Linus Neumann, spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club. “Many digital corona lists were knitted with a hot needle and make data protection promises that are difficult to keep. The security of a paper system, on the other hand, is easy to assess, even for laypeople.”

Established cloud services have often only hastily “converted” existing systems instead of specifically dealing with the security and data protection requirements of contact tracing.

“The sensitive data will then not end up at the restaurant, but in a large pile somewhere on the Internet, where they will wait for interested hackers for the next few years.”

Recommendations for visitors

If your preferred restaurant insists on cloud recording, we recommend new culinary adventures in other establishments.

However, even with paper-based recording, the CCC recommends setting up a separate pseudonymous e-mail address just for this purpose. For example, many free service providers allow incoming messages to be forwarded to the actual email address.

Fifteen minutes of effort ensure data economy is minimized without the risk of missing an important warning.

Recommendations for safe collection

The Chaos Computer Club generally advises against digital corona lists – especially if they save their data in a cloud instead of in the restaurant.

We also use the following paper system in our own hackspaces:

1. Each visitor or group receives a separate slip of paper to record so that the data of other guests cannot be viewed.
2. The completed slip of paper is thrown into a locked mailbox to protect it from prying eyes.
3. This is emptied into an envelope at the end of the day, which is labeled and sealed with the date of the day recorded.
4. The sealed envelopes are kept in a safe place.
5. Every day an envelope that has expired is safely destroyed – and a new one is added.

Recommendations to the legislator

The goal of being able to inform visitors quickly in the event of an incident is legitimate and important. Still, a number of unnecessary problems were placed in the way of the endeavor

1. There are increasing numbers of cases in which the lists have been misused for police investigations. Such measures motivate visitors to enter incorrect data in the lists.
2. The legislator sees no reason to put an end to this misuse of data. This further undermines the low level of trust that remains.
3. In many facilities the lists are openly available, which raises concerns about unwanted contact by other guests.

Carelessly lost trust can now only be regained through clear legal regulation.

* The marked information has been confirmed in writing or specified by gastronovi

Ideas for how to prepare for the next uprising: like the mutual aid organizing of the spring, meet your neighbors and find your allies or accomplices. https://anathema.noblogs.org/post/2020/08/25/volume-6-issue-6/ Source food. It doesn't mention dumpster-diving.

The publication, Anathema, tells stories of people arrested this summer, how to contact some of them, and the lessons learned to avoid the same detection.

It mentions the Canadian ecologist who writes about how he and other scientists believe global warming will wipe out 90% of humans by the end of the century. https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/18/Climate-Crisis-Wipe-Out/ my notes – https://todon.nl/@kete/104751375099840289

I can't select text in Anathema.

“other models for sustainable lifeways already exist and are highly functional without necessitating cities, agriculture, or central organization.” (5) “Indigenous peoples currently protect 80 percent of the world's biodiversity....” (5)

Anathema has an article about DIY defunding like burning cop cars. If police only solve 2% of crimes, then their service to most people is truly an illusion that keeps most people pacified.

I'm glad Anathema discusses “the destruction of schooling.”

There's important coverage of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and its ANSWER Coalition who are not just a nuisance in Philly but wouldn't kick out alt-right fascists at their “anti-war protest in Denver”: peace-policing, “constant photographing”, etc. “we shouldn't wait for the next publicized uprising.... take advantage of the opportunities for attack....” Anathema explains why Philly needs anti-racist activists to make a comeback, and it reviews occupying and gives some advice.

continued from https://todon.nl/@kete/104746759160905809

• “in-person instruction and the presence of students in Athens is likely to lead to hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of COVID-19 victims, with collateral health impacts on Athens-Clarke County, its hospitals, and the region at large.”

• needs:

  • “testing more than 6,000 students, faculty, and staff per day as is needed to manage a COVID outbreak,”
  • “provide testing data daily so we can actively surveille and anticipate the need to pivot,”
  • “operating our own contact tracing program to manage outbreaks”

• “UGA’s plan to test, at most, 300 non-randomized people per day is inadequate even for surveillance. It is certainly far too low to have sufficient data to identify clusters and isolate infected individuals.”

• “Northeastern University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been able to test tens of thousands of people per day.”

• “UGA disingenuously claims that it cannot release daily information on the number of tests conducted and number of positive test results because of legal constraints – despite the fact that Georgia Tech and four other sister universities in Georgia are doing so.”

• UGA wants to depend on the GA Dept of Public Health who was already overwhelmed before the students returned, so there wouldn't be any contact tracing.

continued from https://todon.nl/@kete/104723195894267992

“In many of these cases, the city admits no wrongdoing on the part of the police....” In NYC, a lot of the offensive police are “the same cops repeating the same offenses — and no one’s doing anything about it.”

“There is an incentive to [make more] arrests.... the most “active” officers are also the most rewarded. “They’re getting raises basically based on the amount of arrests they make, regardless of whether they are ‘good arrests’.... These officers have so little supervision, no oversight, no accountability.... They do whatever they want.””

Also, “there is a culture of covering up for bad behavior. “If it’s known that a particular officer at a precinct has five lawsuits pending, they’re not going to stage an intervention. they’re going to ... assign his next bad arrest to a different officer”....”

“ProPublica ... recently published a cache of city-dwellers’ complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board.... The accounts of abuse by officers echo many found in lawsuits against the city.”

“even if our goal is simply to hold a particular physical space, we have to prioritize carrying out offensive activities throughout society at large that can keep our adversaries on the defensive, while investing energy in the activities that nourish movements and spaces rather than focusing on defending particular boundaries. We should understand occupied spaces as an effect of our efforts, rather than as the central cause we rally around.

“a couple people suddenly decided that rather than deterring police from charging, the barricades were trapping us in. They would say things like “We need to make an escape route,” or “The barricades give the police an excuse to raid the park.” In reality, the police had every excuse they needed to evict the park, barricades or not, and NYPD has never waited for excuses to attack us. Barricades keep the police from rushing in to make random arrests.

“Regarding the question of escape routes, remember, every exit is also an entrance. Because the intended goal of the occupation is to hold space rather than to be mobile, it makes sense to have a strong perimeter on all sides.

“the larger the area occupied, the more police it will take to surround it. The sheer size of the City Hall Autonomous Zone is what enables a small group of people to defend overnight. It took police two hours to dismantle the unguarded barricades early Wednesday morning. Had the crowd chosen to leave the park while police were attacking, this would have been plenty of time to get everyone out through the other end.

“police were unable to get through the Northwest side as long as protesters were guarding it. police entered through the gap in the northeast and were able to make arrests. Fortunately, they were quickly pushed back to the outskirts, where they waited until early morning for our numbers to dwindle. In the early morning, they flooded in through the Northeast and pushed everyone back into the park. This shows how important the barricades are to holding the space and keeping us safe.”

The zone was not utopia. There were liberals/progressives. “If some tactics or ideas don’t catch on at one end of the park, there’s a good chance they will still work at the other end. The crowd dynamics are always changing. If you try something and it doesn’t get the reaction you were hoping, try something else—or just wait a bit and try it again.

“I’m standing with friends and strangers holding each other as we push against police shields. It’s the second night in a row that I’m nearly certain we’re all going to be arrested. Just the same, there’s really no other option but to stand our ground and endure. After hours of confrontation, pepper spray, and beatings, the police finally get the order to retreat.

“a stretch of the city in which the police cannot enforce law and order and with which they cannot negotiate.

“after a Black man was murdered

“The next day, the site was packed with people for most of the day; by sundown, the cops had been forced out of the area by people throwing bottles and attacking their cars.

“the only reason the crowd was able to attack the building in peace is because all the activists and NGO people were focused on the freeway....

“As the building went up, a cop tried to clear the streets in front of Area X by driving erratically through the street where dozens of people had been gathered. His objective was to open a route for fire trucks, but this failed as the police vehicle was repeatedly attacked with bricks. After a few laps in the street, he was forced to retreat.

“a large rowdy crowd split off to join a militant Black-led march headed to a nearby police precinct. The police had been tied up on the highway and elsewhere in the city that day, and now a new formation was headed to a nearby neighborhood, further dividing their attention. The march was guarded by barricaders and rock slingers who attacked police when they tried to drive by the crowd. police began firing tear gas and flash-bang grenades at the crowd and people responded with bottles, rocks, fireworks, and lasers.

“Many people in Area X have a very clear vision and they share that vision with those who ask. One of the first things we had to figure out as organized comrades was how to fight alongside the force that already exists here.

“every day since the shooting, ... blocking the streets with cars, watching sideshows, and so on. expropriated construction barricades to help secure the space.... At one point, for good reason, Area X did not allow any white people to enter the space.

“While rowdy marches of young front-liners and people from Area X battled with police at the nearby precinct on the first several nights, these eventually fizzled out.

“we invited them to participate in a squatted rave just around the corner from the occupation. This change of setting, expanding the uncontrollable areas near Area X, also added a new dimension to our friendships.

“I rushed over to pick up a smoking round with my leather glove and dunked it in my bucket of water and baking soda.

“if you can maintain the people and the energy until sunset, something good can happen.

“the laser and the loud music basically painted an audio-visual target for the police. Like most crowd tactics to resist police, lasers can provide increased safety if many people are using them, but if it’s only a few, they can increase the risk, especially to those employing them.

“Wear goggles and helmets y’all.” (tear gas)

“it felt glib to have music on while people were trying to get their bearings.” I appreciate turning off the music at times like this. “A good beat can go a long way to give a crowd a sense of ownership over a space.”

I feel like the author could have distinguished between vandalizing and the historic murders of a couple black people.

“my friend and I were the only white people there. People were joking around while throwing trashcans into the street, setting them on fire....

“I don’t seek to control territory. I seek to liberate it.

“a dumpster fire of epic proportions was happening at another intersection, with Black people around it telling everyone to enjoy themselves and not to put the fire out—to go somewhere else if it wasn’t their thing, reminding people that Minneapolis has just decided to defund their police force after many fires and refusing to protest the “right, legal way.”” https://crimethinc.com/2020/07/02/the-cop-free-zone-reflections-from-experiments-in-autonomy-around-the-us