We joined the protests over police violence in downtown Oakland, and the experience has certainly added some nuance to my outlook, as getting closer to the action will often do without fail.
I have to set this discussion up, so please bear with me.
First, the nature of our neoliberal system has it so that many people are forced into the role of homo economicus whether they like it or not. Its ubiquitous power creates its own self-fulfilling prophecy: if you buy up all of the public property, slash all of the public services, and sharply limit the flow of currency so that everyone is forced into an artificially created economic sphere to survive, then most people will attempt to hold jobs at the remaining institutions where the money and resources are flowing.
This state of affairs is the case because of what we allow our most powerful members of society to get away with. When the power of wealth and the underlying business ethos is worshiped as an end, then you allow the most economically powerful businessmen to control wider and wider facets of society. Every individual wants to see his or her self reflected in his or her surroundings in some sense. So it only follows that the most powerful individuals will see to it that their self is instantiated and multiplied across the land, altering the composition of society so that ever more of their spawn can acquire ever more power, or consenting human - and by extension technological - energy.
This is what you see lurking beneath the sterile surface of neoliberal economic propaganda. It is less the case that its adherents believe neoliberalism actually works - though they certainly do - and more the case that they believe it must work because it reflects what they are: selfish, sociopathic individuals, who probably experience a tragic sense of emptiness when they relate to other human beings. And so mass robbery becomes a ruling ethos, which by necessity spreads its logic, so that everyone caught up in the system must survive by some form of exploitation, so that finally universal exploitation becomes the case, with varying tiers of economic power forming wherein chosen economic classes and cultural groups are given a portion of the spoils in return for consent. Needless to say, even communal, intellectual, spiritual, and artistic outlets become sucked into this sinkhole.
Enough abstraction! To keep on point, I first mentioned that individuals are forced to take work where they can, as an economy with a large pool of unemployed can only absorb so many individuals. Of course this doesn't account for the numerous motivations one has to join the police force, but one necessarily has to take this reality into account when evaluating the institution itself: the institution is bent over the will of the ruling class, with the individuals within the police bent around this shape in turn, regardless of their illusions of what it means to be an officer of the law.
And so the institution takes on a certain character, with the most brutal, authoritarian, and corrupt individuals ruling the roost, especially at higher proximal locations to power, while the honest, well-meaning individuals are silenced to remain in the tribe, or who are pushed out or driven mad. Happily there are exceptions that buck the trend, but they remain exceptions.
But what does all of this have to do with our experience in Oakland? Well, looking for the actual site of the protest we happened by a homeless man that wanted to play on the drums we brought. After talking to him for a bit, we turned around and were startled upon coming face to face with four or five riot cops, and realized that we were right across the street from the police station. We made eye contact with several of these men and women and on their faces where not expressions of aggression and pugnaciousness, but exhaustion and reluctance, human workers caught within the fatalistic confines of a charged national symbol.
Granted, not all of the police exhibited these momentary signs of frailty. When the police grew tired of the march downtown, they advanced on us rapidly with a row of heavy riot units, shouting threats through a megaphone and commanding us to disperse, which is a common tactic. And supposedly the jackasses in Berkeley met a peaceful crowd of protesters with batons and teargas in short order. So much for the first amendment.
Nevertheless, everywhere there were breaches in the homogeneous facade of symbol. Many businesses stationed private security forces outside of their doors in anticipation of the protests, with many of these employees people of color, looks of despair and vacant disassociation on their faces, forced away from their own long term interests by the dictates of bare economic survival. A black man in a business suit stood outside of the downtown Wells Fargo building with a confused grimace on his face as he surveyed the shattered glass of the entire front door, though as we walked further past I was amused to find that the Wells Fargo building was the most targeted building on the block: everywhere were boarded up windows from previous nights. Nevertheless, property damage usually only hurts ordinary people, as the owners of property shrug and pass on the costs as they always do. The protest crowd expresses itself in many ways, not all of them productive, though this can be difficult to alter anyways.
Which brings me to the lack of homogeneity of the protest crowd itself, though its difference was unified under its common cause in this case. Some black bloc (and this group isn't even homogeneous) types ran up with a black flag and dropped a large window, and the rest of the protesters chased them away shouting "we don't do that."
The crowd was a mix of fun loving thrill seekers, serious but polite individuals, hipsters, hostile individuals barking slogans like "fuck the police" and even outright vandals, though the latter were far more rare. It has been a common observation of protest movements like Occupy that these crowds become greater social expressions which fan out in every direction, much as what happens at a festival, which was certainly the case for this one. There is a great public catharsis, and a great joy which is immediately apparent in the faces of the crowd. Looking at the radiant faces of the crowd, and the despairing faces of those individuals administrating the institutions of suppression, one gains a strong sense of where the energy is flowing.
Through these social ruptures, suppressed and socially unabsorbed egos burst forth in every direction, expressing themselves, finally to be witnessed by an onlooking public. People ride bikes, walk their dogs (we walked ours), bang on drums and pots, play instruments, display signs, dress up, and yes, occasionally wreck things or get into fights.
The smart cops know to allow these explosive social expressions to burst forth and curl their way down the streets, containing this energy at the more extreme edges, almost as one loosens a release valve, while the idiots that go in clubs swinging end up having this explosive energy slapped back at them eventually, albeit in a different form. That is, until benevolent expression can no longer be contained, and the forces of desperation and violence are unleashed.
And so that is that.
Usually when I go about putting on the old doom hat, the qualifications hat is soon to follow. As I write and strain to capture the intricacies of this process, I can't help but chuckle to myself as the infinite complexities of reality gnaw away at the account that I attempted, as lapping waters erode a carefully constructed sand castle. In the end, I can't look at a limited written account (whether mine or another's) as something that is true in an absolute sense. I want to know whether it withstands the erosion of time and experience; it will most certainly lose some of its original shape.
As I attempted to express a post back, the system is taking on a certain character, and it will fall in accordance with the shape of that character, regardless of the numerous potentials whirling about underneath these institutions, classes, and symbols. This is what is worth understanding, to me anyways.
And then of course I scold myself for these recursive layers of self-reflection and self-indulgence. It is the people out there that are worth all of the attention, and of course, the world they are a part of.
