Land of the…oh forget it.
I keep starting this entry over. I want to give context, or situate it, or create a compelling narrative… but none of that wants to come out. I’d say I was angry, but it’s that bone deep anger/sadness/tiredness… that heavy sludge of frustration and cynicism and wearinesss with it all.
Tuesday was May Day. And while my boss was trying to tell us all about how in the part of Hawai’i he’s from, it’s celebrated in a very old-world European ‘maypoles and dancing’ (in contrast to the way he says “everybody” sees it here, as International Workers’ Day), people were marching down our streets, demonstrating.
As I drove home that day, I saw what I could only describe as a constellation of helicopters. I’d never seen so many helicopters hovering before; only circling, trying to get a better angle or catch a suspect. This was four helicopters, in a dipper shape, just…being. They were later joined by a fifth as I inched my way down the freeway.
It was a day of lights, but no sirens.
Usually my days are punctuated by sirens, both at work and at home… but not that day. That day, I saw a train of police cars five deep crawling down the freeway. Four little baby cars with interior light racks following a big momma car with a top-mounted light rack, silently blinking their way down the freeway like ducklings in a Disney film. That day, all the sirens seemed to be elsewhere.
When I got home, and turned on the TV, I figured out why.Nezua and BrownFemiPower and Xicano Pwr tell it better than I can. They’ve got the history and the stories and the facts. I can wait while you read them.
Back? Good. Disgusted? Good.
The radio station I listen to in the mornings, Latino 96.3*, had an opportunity for people to call in and talk. One of the first people they got was an officer from the LAPD, who… sounded exactly as one expected an officer (not an official spokesperson, trained to deal with the press, but one of the angry, scared men out there with weapons) to sound. Asked about whether the force was excessive - specifically, about the allegations of five police officers beating a seven-year-old boy who didn’t get out of the way in time - his only response was that if the people didn’t get out of the way, they would have to be moved.
What was interesting to me, if not at all surprising, was the fear. The DJs (having had a reporter there this year, and been at the marches themselves last year) knew what had provoked the response… it’s all over the place: small groups of people in an isolated area throwing water bottles. They pressed the caller on this, and his response was that if people in a group were threatening him, and he’s in his riot gear and charged with keeping the peace, he wasn’t going to go in there and arrest the person throwing things, because he might be hurt or killed. Instead, he was going to clear the area with as much force as possible, to neutralize the threat.
It was very clear that his training and the culture of fear and antagonism we have with respect to the police had created a very dangerous us/them disconnect. As soon as that riot gear was donned, every water-bottle throwing punk, confused child, and panicked parent became a potential threat. The combination of high-tension planning (the event was predicted to have more than 100,000 people coming, even if only about 25,000 showed up) and mob mentality, in a group of armed, nervous, antagonistic men (and women)…
… well, you know where this is going.
Breviloquence and I were talking about it last night. He still can’t get over the fear and mistrust we have of our police here. Where he’s from, the police generally have little to do, and mostly spend their time breaking up parties for underage drinking and occasionally stopping people for speeding. They’re annoying, sure… but they’re not scary.
As he was watching the events proceed on TV (where even the heaviest Fox spin couldn’t mask the fact that this was a PR disaster, at the very least), he finally exploded: “This isn’t what police do! This is what you do when you’re the police who’s really the military in a dictatorial state, not what you do when you’re the city/county police force here!”
I think I looked at him funny. I’m pretty sure I laughed. Between my discipline (see how I took it macro up there, with the fear and training and physical circumstance? Just watch me add in some game theory and probability to make it more interesting.) and my context (brown, female, and growing up here), I couldn’t help it. Even though we’ve had relatively little police harassment (and that’s a story for another time), and my family has worked pretty hard to keep us from an irrational fear of police… even though I try not to fall prey to irrational fear of the police… I’ve never experienced them as people who were fully “on my side.” Individual police officers are as varied as individuals in other contexts; some are nice, some are mean, some are apathetic, some are funny… but in groups, especially in times of confrontation, they are scary.
“This is the LAPD. What did you expect?”
I think he’s still having trouble processing that. The concept that there are people in the same socioeconomic niche he grew up in who are inured to the fact that the police aren’t going to work for them, and probably would work actively against them… that’s kind of foreign to him.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I think I agree with him. I shouldn’t feel this way. The police shouldn’t be scary. Even if they’re not all hugs and bunnies, they shouldn’t be a force to be weighed against whatever present evils one is experiencing.
But… that’s not the case, and I’ve few enough illusions about that. Few illusions that they’d come quickly if I called and said something was wrong. Fewer still illusions that I’d be believed if I were raped. Fear of getting pulled over for nothing, especially while I’m alone, leads to excessive checking of my speed and driving patterns and hair and neighborhood. Fear of being blamed for others’ wrongdoing makes me check my clothing and demeanor, look for exits, check alibis and witnesses, and try never to be alone. Fear.
Fear all around, really. It loops straight into what Aunt B. was talking about the other day: All Brown People are the Same; All Brown People are Potential Terrorists. Even though nobody mentioned terrorism, the undercurrent was there clear as day. That fear on their side, the anger on ours, the horrid deadlock.
When a man in riot gear, with guns and sticks and tasers, refuses to go do his job right because he “might get killed” by the kids throwing water bottles… that’s fear. When police open fire (rubber bullets or not) into a crowd of people including children in strollers, reporters trying to do their job, and people exercising their constitutional rights to peaceful assembly… that’s fear.
We live in a world that is increasingly polarized. Not just in the normal, heuristics and conflict theory ways, but a heightened and distorted “us against all” mentality. This pervasive fear of the namelessfaceless “other”… the scary person that melts back into the crowd, the quiet kid that could turn on you at any moment, the hardworking migrant worker who’s really a terrorist… when anybody outside of your little circle can turn out to be your worst nightmare, doesn’t a little preemptive force seem justified?
That’s what I saw in the conflict yesterday. In terms of scale, and cost, and even outrage… it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. But the mechanism at work seems subtly altered. Rather than outright racial tension, or “simple” hyperaggression, or even corruption… we have a return to zombies and boogeymen. Everyone’s potentially a threat. Every bump in the night could be the house settling or a monster out to get you.
And we are reaching out. To what end, I don’t quite know… but our Mayor was on TV just last night, talking about how he was going to El Salvador to pursue our gang members when they fled. I wish I’d thought to write down his exact words, because they made me squirm. Not that working against gang activity, particularly this gang activity, is a bad thing… but the way he just stepped out there, the way he spoke about it. Like the whole big country of El Salvador was nothing more than a little sister city further down the coastline.
And there’s the loop again. Gangs! They’re everywhere! We need to crack down, we need to be TOUGH! And they’re all these brown people, everywhere… we need to change our immigration policies because if they’re not terrorists, they’re going to be gang members. We need to deport them! Except… deporting them makes it worse. Crap. So now we need to go work with other countries to stop it. Except that somehow “work with” means “send our police officers to.”
Fear and more fear. Walls and borders and crackdowns. Keep ‘em out, return to sender, lock ‘em up, pursue ‘em into other countries (even your ice cream isn’t safe)… but don’t look at the causes, the stressors, the stupid stupid structures that make these problems thrive. Yell about the bombers but don’t ever think about why they might be doing it. Better to talk about how evil they are, and see if you can build a better border, or a faster tank, or see if you can bludgeon all the other countries into listening.
Be scared, or they might win! Be paranoid, but don’t be watchful. Fight tooth and nail for a stretch of dirt to plant a flag in, and salt the earth to make sure nobody else gets it either. Panic for all the unborn babies, but don’t make the world viable for them afterward. Deplore the crimes of the downtrodden, but don’t think about the ones you can’t see as easily. Be scared. Be angry. Be anything but compassionate.
Don’t you dare think.
Don’t you dare feel.
Because nothing is easier than blasting your way through… and nothing is scarier, harder, more confusing than trying to fix the system and make it really work. Nothing is scarier than figuring out that the framework you’ve been stuck in all this time is wrong.
——-
* I know, I’m not Latina. And no, I don’t speak Spanish; I don’t understand the words to most of the songs they play, and half of their interviews fly right over my head. But they’re nice people, and genuinely concerned about the community, and offer oppotunities for dialogue about tough events like the Long Beach beating case, and the events of this Tuesday. That, and after the whole rape joke thing, I had to find a new station to listen to on my drive to work. I’d rather listen to music that’s not really my thing in a language I don’t understand than spend my mornings being insulted between songs I kinda like.
Whoa, posts 3 days in a row, when will we be so lucky again?
I think my reaction to the LAPD discussion would probably have been similar to yours. And I haven’t been an Angeleno (or would it be Angelena?) for a long time. I don’t necessarily follow this stuff, but the LAPD, or really possibly any big city PD seems to have a rather antagonistic relationship with the people.
I remember actually, being at my uncle’s wedding, and my guzhang is a police officer. And I guess he was friends with the police chief who was in charge at the time of Rodney King, and he was telling us how he was a really nice guy in person. (My family is hella whitewashed) It was just really weird, connecting the guy he was talking about with the guy who was responsible for all the shit that went down.
Anyway that’s all kind of scattershot, but that’s what I’m thinking about.
[...] Magniloquence has a post about her feelings about the whole thing. Her account of one police officer’s take rings so true to me I about can’t stand it. I grew up believing that any time the police showed up, shit was going to rain down on everyone–guilty or innocent. But it still breaks my heart to see how many people are willing to just accept that the police are at war with most of the community. [...]
This is a historical product of a historical process. The US is a settler-state (Hellloooooo, South Africa…..Hellooooo, Australia) and has never adequately come to grips with that, especially in the US West. I’ll write more about this over at my place. Anything I have to say is way too long for a comments section.
Funny how the symathetic left refers to the protestors as ‘kids’.
The cop had every reason to be afraid. He is extremely outnumbered and may remember a little tiff in Seattle a few years ago.
Yes, he has a gun, but if he is swarmed, that won’t do him any good.
And it is better to control the crowd with non-lethal force, even though it’s painful, that to have to be pushed to draw his gun.
Look, there’s plenty that I don’t like about cops, but I can completely understand his reasoning and his fear.
Blame the idiots throwing bottles, instead of the cops.
Heh. I refer to them as “kids” because the specific ones shown were kids. Teenagers, perhaps. There may have also been adults throwing bottles, but the ones captured on camera were clearly my age or younger.
And there’s a difference between a lone policeman being afraid to go into a crowd, even if armored (which is, of course, crazy odds), and a line of policemen deciding to shoot into a crowd to control it and push the troublemaking sections nearly a city block into segments of the crowd that had, thus far, been entirely peaceful. That’s not just fear, that’s fear leading to some really bad decisions.
Really bad decisions including violating their own policy and shooting directly at people (at sensitive areas on people no less) instead of the ground, clubbing civilians and press members from behind without warning instead of asking them to disperse or moving them in the direction they wanted to go, and shoving people to the ground (who were actually moving in the direction indicated) to yell at them to move in a direction instead of, well, allowing them to move in the direction they were being asked to go in. Again, that’s fear and anger getting in the way of accomplishing their goals in the fastest and safest way possible.
As for when I’ll post this much again… I don’t know! Blame slow days in left Blogistan, me not having internet at home (and thus having to think long and hard about one or two issues and then post, rather than just commenting on everyone’s stuff), and me procrastinating really hard on some things at work.
“Perhaps” teenagers or in their 20’s (your age)?
That’s an adult, certainly adult enough to pose a threat.
Mobs (or crowds, if you prefer) have a great deal of momentum. The trick to controlling them is getting the momentum moving the way you want it to. That is not accomplished by asking nicely, or ‘giving people time’ to think.
I haven’t seen the video, so I’m not saying they did everything right. I’m just saying that there are a lot of justifications other than ‘cops are racists, just looking to beat up brown people’.
Okay, I’ll give you that I’m certainly old enough to pose a threat. But still visually, it was pretty clear that this was a volley of things that couldn’t possibly hurt people in riot gear, thrown by a group of young people kind of off to the side.
This is the video from Fox. It doesn’t show the beginning, but it does detail the treatment of members of the press. I haven’t listened to the sound, as I’m at work.. so I don’t know what she says about it.
IndyMedia has pretty much everything (except, of course, the specific bit of footage I’m looking for. Figures. I saw it on the news, though, so it’s probably out there). Including audio of police radio.
And I don’t think the answer is nearly as simple as ‘cops are racists, just looking to beat up brown people’. I think that’s a part of it, but a systemic/structural part of it, and not nearly as bad as the pure, amped up fear that’s being blasted. Like Aunt B said, they act out of fear of us, and we act out of fear of them. Historically, it’s justified on both sides… but it doesn’t help either of us, and they’re largely the ones with the power to stop it.
As I see it, the problem is that cops are more likely to perceive a threat when they’re looking at brown people than when they’re looking at white ones. Remember the anti-Iraq-war demonstrations around town a few years back? That footage looked at least as disorderly as anything I’ve seen from this one, but I don’t recall the LAPD doing anything but stand around looking resolute. Of course, those demonstrations included a lot of white people.
Thanks for posting on this. an occasional reader of your blog, I’ve been poking around looking for more discussion of these events.
Although on one level I agree the cops were motivated by fear, I don’t see how (as some suggest) that is any kind of excuse. Looking at the sources of that fear is helpful (as BetaCandy’s post implies, it’s not neutral w/r/t race). But really, shouldn’t it also matter that part of a cop’s job is supposed to be to enter into dangerous situations? so freaking out and escalating violence is a particular failure.
Exador’s posts conflates the idea that 1) they were responding to a perceived threat and 2) that response was reasonable.
even if I grant an individual cop’s fear as reasonable (and I think that’s debatable: the numbers of armed and armored cops vis-a-vis the crowd in the park, and the nature of the demonstration and that crowd i.e. peaceful, unarmed and family-oriented).
So even if they were afraid, handling that fear by shooting at face height, shooting into crowds that clearly include small children, and beating people from behind is irresponsible, and ineffective (threatening children and beating the injured tends to make crowds angry).
Surely if you believe in a police force, you believe they are there to keep the peace, and to behave more responsibly than your average scared person? What does their job entail? shooting people they are afraid of seems like a poor definition.
Looking at the Fox video,
The witness said, “a group of young guys started provoking the police”
Ms Gonzalez (the reporter) is told to move beyond the skirmish line, she gets her panties in a wad because she is “usually allowed”, whatever. When the cop THEN grabs her arm, you can see her SWING at the cop, hitting him.
Listening to her “explaining” to cop about where she want to go it laughable.
People are pretty consistent that they didn’t hear a warning to disperse. That is a problem. The cops should have been announcing that loud and clear, well in front of the riot line.
great post.
Thanks, Nez! (I know, I know.. late as usual.)
And to everyone else that commented… thanks for stopping by! Maybe one day I’ll post something that gets comments at a time when I can actually respond to them.
[...] This is Messed Up., citizenship, History, Uncategorized — bridgett @ 10:09 am I promised Magniloquence and my own conscience that I’d have something to say about the May 1st headbusting that went [...]
Mags, finally did as I said I would, but then someone who said it better came along:
http://mybeautifulwickedness.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/black-and-brown-bodies-turning-black-and-blue/