Some thoughts on SB1070 & civil disobedience

by Jon Riley

Solidarity to the 40 Tucson High students who walked out of class, and to the 9 students arrested at the state capitol yesterday!

Our hats are off to all the youth who took courageous acts today, it is inspiring to see resistance to SB1070, a piece of legislation that has passed the Arizona Legislature, and is waiting for final approval this week by Governor Brewer. This bill was drafted by the notorious anti-immigrant bigot, and state senator, Russell Pearce. Pearce continues to push for legislation that could take Arizona back to something that would only resemble the worst days of the segregation south. In essence, if SB1070 is passed, the state of Arizona will have state sanctioned racial profiling, white supremacists like Pearce are counting on this bill to intimidate much of the Hispanic population so that they would move out of state. This is state sanctioned ethnic cleansing. This one's a game changer.

This wasn't lost upon the nine people who chained themselves to doors at the state capitol today, the most dramatic escalation taken by those in power was met with a response from those below. More than a symbolic gesture, maybe more of a declaration, the immigrant movement in Phoenix took a big step forward today, birthing a civil disobedience campaign that will organize against and oppose the continuing racist assault.


We see this attack on immigrants and communities of color in the cities mirrored in the century old border controls and movement restrictions that the Tohono O'odham people continue to resist on their traditional homeland. Just to travel home, from a village on one side of the border to a village on the other side becomes a life or death situation. IDs are mandatory, profiling is a daily occurrence, the agents of state have their finger on the trigger guard and their eyes on you. How much different will anywhere else be in Arizona if this bill passes? This picture will become more clear everywhere, as the city cop checks for "papers" in Mesa, the border patrol agent in Sells mans a checkpoint, and ICE agents conduct workplace raids in Flagstaff. The struggles that have been isolated, or hidden to each other for too long are finding each other now, only as the attack on human freedom and dignity becomes total.

Lately, we at PCWC have had a saying about this bill, that if is signed into law it will be "the end of politics," this is the end of the debate as far as we're concerned. Unlike a conflict in politics, there's no debate with the law, should we hold onto the illusion that the voice of struggle holds sway in the police station, courtroom, capitol, mayor's office, or white house?

To be sure, this is a dark time, terror lingers on across Arizona these nights, and surely worse will come. Not all is lost though, and these words from a Greek comrade may be of use in these desperate times. "Action dries your tears," he said, and there's always a place for action in our lives.



DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST THE SB1070 9!
DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST THE ARPAIO 5!
BROADEN THE SOCIAL STRUGGLE!

Thoughts on our role in the emerging struggle against the racist state of Arizona

This is not meant to be a final conclusion, just an attempt to get my initial thoughts down about what we could be facing and the means I see as the best way to approach it.

As what seems like the inevitable signing of Russell Pearce's anti-immigrant law grows near, driving a nail into the coffin that is the political strategy pursued by local pro-migrant organizers, the question increasingly becomes what will be the nature of the resistance that will emerge to oppose it. Politics as a means of settling it is clearly dead. There is no political solution and there is no one left to appeal to. Friday's ICE raids proved that. We need to be thinking about the kind of resistance that will work and how we can organize it.

Likewise, we need to be thinking about what the terrain of struggle will be. Who will be our allies? What or who will we target? If we are done trying to convince, what does that mean? It seems to me that the only option left is a campaign of direct action aimed at causing real consequences for the system. We must begin to develop the organizational forms that can disrupt and shut down the functions of the state and Capital in Arizona if need be. The sort of forms that can cause havoc and can respond quickly to the ongoing crisis with a variety of creative resistance measures.

The natural form in my opinion is the affinity group and some kind of facilitating structure for coordination, perhaps a spokescouncil or an assembly. Perhaps the latter that can transform into the former when necessary. Above all, this limited organization must be anti-political, anti-bureaucratic and horizontal. Anyone who can put together an affinity group and agree to a few key points should be able to participate, but no politicians or political parties should be allowed in. For guidance in this we can look to the Zapatistas "Other Campaign". The politicians have failed us utterly, as we always knew they would. We must be done with them.

To my mind, the natural starting point for defining participation in such a group would be the DO@ statement. If someone can agree with that, then they should be able to participate in the resistance we organize. If not, they are, of course, free to do their own thing, as anyone is. Perhaps boiling them down a bit would be worthwhile to develop a clear and concise criteria for organizing. Perhaps there are other criteria that would work just as well. We need to be thinking about that. In particular we need to think of ways to keep the leftist activists out.

One thing the DO@ statement brings to the table is a broader view of the struggle beyond just the country politicos that have been the general focus of movement leadership in town. Whether that was a good way to organize or not is irrelevant now: the problem, with this new law, will be clearly and unambiguously bigger than the county. The DO@ refrain, "Free movement for all, no dislocations for anyone", likewise seems a good starting point to me.

One thing to keep our eye on is the machinations of the leftist managers of struggle. They are desperate now. Already they have tried to intervene against direct action and the will in all likelihood continue to do so. They know they have little to offer the resistance now, but that doesn't mean they won't use all manner of tricks to try to hold on to the movement. It's time for them to recognize failure when they see it. Whatever role they have now must be in bringing their counsel to support the direct action movement that must certainly begin the second that law is signed. I'm sure they have a lot to share, but they must admit that the nature of the struggle is now much changed and so naturally should our tactics and strategies. Rather than scaring people with charges, fines and jail times, they need to be organizing legal defense for what may come. Certainly they have much to offer in this regard.

We also need to be thinking about our opposition and our potential allies. At the Tempe Tea Party rally libertarians stood outside flyering against Pearce's law. This continues to be an important breach in the front of white supremacy and we must recognize it. We must continue to engage it and we must continue to push on that contradiction so that others are emboldened to break with the racist trajectory. We have to also be building connections, not necessarily finding a base of support, but finding sympathizers. We'll need each other. We are autonomous and speak for ourselves, but there are friends out there. Let's get to know and encourage each other.

Likewise, aside from direct action, we need to be producing literature, flyers and media on a scale that we heretofore have not considered in Phoenix. Thousands and thousands of copies must be distributed. We need to think about going places we haven't gone before. Sports games. Gun shows. Malls. Churches. "What side are you on?" we must demand. The priority must be in getting arguments in the hands of white people that can force them to choose one side or the other. We cannot allow the luxury of the middle ground anymore. This similarly goes for the liberal activists and party hacks who will try to negotiate on their own and others' behalves. We must make this position impossible. Our role is to push as far and as hard as we can and to refuse compromise.

These are some of the initial thoughts I have on the struggle that seems likely ahead of us. Above all, we must be creative and refuse to be pushed into the narrow paths of struggle that the state, leftist managers and the reactionary right will attempt to impose on us. Lift your eyes and look to the horizon. Take in the broader view. Look for places where we are strong, where they are weak, or where we can act vigorously and quickly. Consider our strengths versus their weaknesses. Look for contradictions that will be profitable. Fortify yourself, find your comrades and get ready. Solidarity means attack!

Considering the immigrant crackdown in the context of the Chinese Exclusion Act

The other day I revisited a chapter in Christian Parenti's excellent book "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror". The cause of my return was the recent awakening of the local right libertarian movement to the connection between the demand for the policing of immigrants and the steady march of the police state in general. Local anti-immigrant hothead and state Senator Russell Pearce has recently come under fire from within the Right for an anti-immigrant bill that libertarians believe, with good justification, will open the door to the imposition of the Real ID or similar national ID card.

Parenti's book, a good read overall, has a truly amazing chapter on the relation between the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act and other similar laws and the rise of the first ID cards (the chapter can be read online for free). Likewise, it goes into a good amount of detail about the ingenious ways that Chinese immigrants developed for resisting and overcoming increasingly onerous State regulation of their movements and relations. Forgery, bribery, flaunting of the law, lying, reliance on familial relations, mass resistance and refusal -- all of these and more constituted the tool box from which Chinese immigrants drew upon in their fight to define for themselves the terms of their lives in the land of the Flower Flag Country.

The story parallels so precisely the situation here in Arizona that the chapter ought to be required reading for anyone organizing against controls on movement, not least of all right libertarians interested in understanding the roots of the national ID card and the ever-present excuse of policing people of color that makes it possible. Parenti writes, "Ultimately Chinese exclusion was the first campaign of mass identification and registration of a civilian population by the US federal government. Conversely, the paper sons industry was the first largest informal anti-surveillance movement in US history."

So, the awakening on the right to this scam is a very important development. We at PCWC have engaged that movement several times over the question, what we see as the contradiction between the demand by the Right for a police regime for immigrants at the same time it demands immunity for itself and declaims the increasing infringement by the state on their own freedoms. This contradiction stands in stark relief when that same movement insists that the demands it makes -- against all evidence -- are somehow not racist. Being interested in contradictions, PCWC has focused on revealing this incongruity and pointing out that, contrary to what many on the Right say, it is in fact the latent white supremacist immunity from policing that is the hidden solution to the conundrum.

To us it's obvious: one can't support the expansion of police power in one sector without expecting it to expand generally. The support by the white population for increasing controls on immigrants, from eVerify to the border wall, has allowed the State the cover it needed to vastly expand the overall system of policing. Now, these controls are being generalized in the forms of freeway speed cameras, national ID cards, national police powers for local cops, internal checkpoints, etc. Lacking an analysis of white supremacy and its affect on the working class (and similarly without a true understanding of class), libertarians have had a hard time recognizing this contradiction.

The white supremacist influence on their politics blinded libertarians on the Right to the encroaching police state under their very nose. They assumed -- perhaps only unconsciously in the case of many -- that, as whites tend to be generally, they would be exempted from the unblinking gaze of the surveillance state as its domain grew. Indeed, as we have analyzed here in the past, some of their attempted resistance to enhanced policing, because it is perverted by the system of white supremacy, has indeed sought precisely to undermine the broadening of the police apparatus and technology only to demand a return to older methods that tended to land disproportionately on people of color. Not very libertarian!

That is, their fight uses the false cover of a fight against tyranny to obscure what is in reality a demand for a "get out of jail free card" from a system that they hope will focus on people of color specifically and leave them, the "good citizens" that "don't break the law" alone. For example, the dominant tendency within the fight against freeway cameras reflects this tendency, since it demands the removal of a relatively "democratic" policing system (in the sense that it tickets anyone who goes over the limit regardless of race) and its replacement with more human police who will, naturally, tend to reflect the general anti-people of color biases that dominate in other spheres. Of course, some in the struggle against surveillance have dissented, most notably the Santas who disabled speed and red light cameras in December 2008. Overall, however, their position was an extreme minority at the time.

The dominant dialog on the Right with regard to the question of immigration is of course problematic not just because it allows the unobstructed -- even welcomed -- advance of the police state, but also because strategically this blind spot undermines class unity by turning one section of the working class into the complicit police officer and jailer of another section. Under these conditions the kind of unity that is required to project a real working class power against Capital becomes impossible. The white part of the working class, then, is in many ways operating within a cross-class alliance with the capitalists, serving the function of a hammer on people who should naturally be their comrades in struggle.

What's important is not just the way that the ruling class exploits or encourages this backstabbing, but also the way that white workers demand the protection of the nanny state's policing apparatus in order to preserve their privileged status in the workplace and other areas. This should be noted because it reveals the common cause of white workers and the capitalist elite. For instance, in the case of Chinese exclusion white workers wanted regulation of the workforce in their favor and the ruling class wanted a timid, marginalized and exploitable foreign labor pool. The two complemented each other and form, in the case of the white working class, a kind of white welfare system, guaranteeing higher wages and other social benefits in exchange for loyalty to the cross-class alliance of whiteness.

So the realization amongst some in the libertarian Right milieu of the true nature of the anti-immigrant agenda -- at least as far as the policing angle goes -- is a very positive development. They may reject the point I am going to make next, but I don't think that makes it less true. When libertarians support resistance to the application of special police powers over immigrants (and thus people of color in general) by seeing within that attack an assault on themselves as well, they are defying the traditional political bonds of whiteness. And, in doing so, they open the way for broader struggle that can further bring the attack on capitalism and the state.