TACOMA, WASH. — Despite the risks to his health amid the pandemic, Daniel López is languishing in immigrant detention because his presence makes money for the private prison company GEO Group.
“To them, we are just commodities for their business,” López, a 32-year-old immigrant from Baja California, Mexico, says. He is speaking from the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., a jail-like facility owned by GEO Group, the corporation that receives more taxpayer dollars for immigrant detention than any other Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor.
“We are forced to work here,” López says. “One dollar per day.” He describes it as a “trap.” The meals, often rotten, come in small portions; if detainees want to eat something else, they have to work to pay for it. “Everything they sell is overpriced,” López adds.
The potentiallycatastrophicimpact of Covid-19 in jails has intensified the feeling of abuse among many detained immigrants. It has also spurred an uprising that mirrors growing political and social movements across the United States.
Nearly 2,500 people have joined Covid-19-related hunger strikes in detention centers nationwide since March, according to Detention Watch Network, a grassroots organization that demands the abolition of immigrant jails. By comparison, between 2015 and 2019, a total of 1,600 people in ICE detention went on hunger strike, according to Freedom for Immigrants.
In June, people detained at the Mesa Verde Detention Facility in Bakersfield, Calif.—operated by GEO—organized what Centro Legal de la Raza considers the first Black Lives Matter protest inside an ICE jail. According to Centro Legal, the legal services agency representing the strikers, immigrants endured a “corrupt and racist criminal justice system before being pushed into the hands of ICE.”
“All these struggles are connected,” says Deyci Carrillo López, a legal assistant at Centro Legal.
Nearly 70 detained people launched a seven-day hunger strike at the beginning of July to warn of the dangers of Covid-19 at Mesa Verde, after a nurse at the facility tested positive. (At least one person detained tested positive for the virus during the hunger strike.)
“I think [the detainees are] organizing [on] the inside and working with each other to see what next steps they can take to actually push GEO to listen to them,” Carrillo López says. “They are thinking about new strategies.”
Since early May, all women, and a number of vulnerable men, have been released from Mesa Verde. Overall, more than 1,400 migrants around the country have been released to avoid exposing them to Covid-19, according to ICE.
Yohanne Eugenio, a 38-year-old born in the Philippines, has been locked up in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma for 17 months. “I’ve lived in the United States for 35 years and I’ve never, ever been treated this way, even when I was incarcerated,” Eugenio says. “It’s like they do not care.”
Eugenio has a painful cough and worries she has Covid-19. She says her condition worsened after officers started using a strong disinfectant. Detention Watch Network (DWN) has identified the use of HDQ Neutral, a disinfectant known to cause bleeding, burns and pain, in ICE facilities.
ICE figures list 3 ,731 total Covid-19 cases and three deaths among 22,405 detained people as of July 21. The Center for American Progress suggests those numbers could be grossly undercounted. As the crisis at San Quentin prison shows, an uncontrollable outbreak inside a jail is a real concern.
Relocations of people with Covid-19 have also spread the virus. The Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, with two Covid-19 cases in late April, experienced a surge after transfers of people from Arizona and Florida. As of July 21, Farmville is the hardest-hit immigration facility in the U.S., with 315 Covid-19 cases.
Bárbara Suarez Galeano, organizing director at DWN, compares the transfers to “biological warfare.” Those detained suffer “multiple levels of aggression and abuse piled onto each other,” she says.
ICE is “also known to use rubber bullets, pepper spray and brute force to harass, intimidate and subdue any organizing inside detention centers,” Suarez Galeano writes in a July 14 op-ed. Others have documented force-feeding and forced hydration in response to hunger strikers, methods considered inhumane by United Nations experts.
Resistance inside continues as corporations profit by keeping people in jail as long as possible.
“We need to be with our families, especially in times like these, when they could get sick,” Daniel López says. “If we were released, we would be able to help them. The biggest risk is keeping us here.”
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“Juneteenth means freedom. Today Junteenth means fuck the police.”
Robert Cuffy, DSA Afro Socialists and Socialist Workers Alliance of Guayana
Juneteenth commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States— the day that Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed in Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended and enslaved people were free.
In New York City and around the United States, there have been three weeks of mobilizations against police brutality and for Black lives. Juneteenth was an extraordinary explosion of larger mobilizations across the city. Hundreds of thousands took the streets in well over 40 actions in different corners of New York City. In every borough, marchers took the streets, gathered in parks, and organized vigils to both commemorate Juneteenth and protest racism and anti-Black violence,.
By 11 AM, there were already protests in Jackson Heights, Brooklyn and Harlem. By noon, there were seven more. One protest marched through Central Park, stopping where the Central Park Five were arrested for a moment of silence. Protesters pointed to the fact that the racist system includes police murders of Black people, as well as the injustice system that systematically locks up Black people. Fifteen more events started between 1 and 1:30 pm all over the city. At 2 pm, fifteen more. Around the city, marches converged and became bigger throughout the day.
A group of Muslims and supporters gathered in front of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, for Jum’ah (Friday prayers), chalking, and an abolitionist open mic, during which organizers and speakers pointed out the NYPD kills Black people and surveils Muslims of all races, and that the only way to fix it was to abolish it. Proving their point, there was almost a 1:2 ratio of cops to people praying, and throughout the prayers the cops kept adding barricades, blocking out people who wished to join in prayer or protest, but letting through the mostly white residents of the ritzy apartment building across the street.
A Bike for Black Lives protest took Bedford Ave, stretching for blocks. Over 6,000 people took the Brooklyn Bridge, making their way from a Brooklyn rally to Manhattan. Over 40 cars in an SEIU 32BJ organized car caravan for Black lives drove through Manhattan, honking their horns and chanting “Black Lives Matter.” The cars carried signs saying “Janitors for Black Lives Matter.”
In Manhattan, the NYC Defund the Police Contingent, organized by DSA AfroSocialists as well as NYC Fight for Our Lives Coalition, rallied in front of City Hall, numbering well over a thousand. Their demands include defunding the police, cops out of our unions and schools, abolish the police, and re-investing in communities.
Their contingent ended at a People’s Assembly. Community members and organizers spoke in favor of defunding the police, and about the underfunding of hospitals and schools in Black communities. Others spoke out against the Democrats and Republicans, both responsible for police brutality and the overblown police budgets. Khalil Smalling of the DSA Afro Socialist Caucus and Red Bloom powerfully read a poem, saying “When will we Workers see, that all our power rests in the chains that bind us together?”
Another speaker said “Trans women are being killed at astronomical rates. We don’t hear about it because CNN doesn’t want to cover it. So I just want to remind you that as we are protesting, we mean all Black lives.” Luigi Morris of Left Voice spoke about the international repercussions of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has inspired mobilizations around the world, as well as the ILWU strike that shut down ports in California. He ended by saying “The elections are coming and the two options that we have– one is calling to shoot people and the other is calling to shoot people in the knee. We can’t trust in any of them. The movement has the task of building our own organization.”
Afterward, the march joined up with another march and in the hot NYC sun, kneeled in silence for 8 minutes, remembering, the 8 minutes that cops kneeled on George Floyd’s neck. As the 8 minutes ended, Strange Fruit came on the loudspeaker, reminding people of the six people of color, five of them Black, recently found hung from trees across the country.
Later in the evening, at Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Dyke March held an event in honor of Black Lives Matter entitled “Break the chains with love,” with a drumming circle and speakers that then marched through the streets of Brooklyn. In other areas of the city, people played live music from the back of pick up trucks. In Highland Park, a Black Lives Matter concert was held. By 7 pm, a group had taken the Williamsburg Bridge and another was on the Brooklyn Bridge. In the evening, a vigil was held in Prospect Park to remember the Black women murdered by a racist, patriarchal society. Hundreds gathered near a tree with Black women and nonbinary people at the center to remember those murdered including Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, Atatyana Jefferson and most recently, Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau.
An opening speaker said, “DeBlasio said Juneteenth is declared an official holiday in NYC and while he claims he wants to make Black struggle visible, he continues to allow the murder and violence against Black women, trans women, Black girls and TGNC comrades go invisiblized… If you really stood with us, there is no way you would allow a faulty healthcare system to exist. And if you really stood with us, you would have canceled the rent.”
On the other side of the city, at an Amazon warehouse in Queens, Amazon workers, members of community organizations, and other activists gathered to give speeches and protest the role that the company plays in the exploitation of Black workers and workers across the world as it rakes in billions of dollars in profits for its executives. The demonstration was a powerful act of solidarity between the labor movement and the mobilizations in the streets calling for justice and an end to institutionalized racism. The event was meant to “remember the lives lost under the exploitation of Amazon and those who have fallen victim to the violence of police that Amazon supports.” Jonathan Bailey, one of the main organizers of the event, said, “Amazon oppresses people inside the warehouses and outside of the warehouses. There is a strong connection between the exploitation and violence of slavery enacted on Black bodies on and off the plantation and the exploitation and violence that Amazon enacts in the warehouse and through policing outside the warehouse.”
The fight against racist police terror is the fight against the capitalism, which continues to exploit and kill Black people at disproportionately higher rates.#BlackLivesMatterpic.twitter.com/NuIPw6TL40
As night fell in New York City, fireworks filled the sky. It is clear that gone are the days of asking for permits for marches or marching on the sidewalk. Gone are the days of the cops not allowing us to have megaphones or us allowing them to bully us into tight spaces at marches. On Juneteenth, hundreds of thousands took the streets to fight anti-Black violence. It’s hard to imagine the city ever being the same.
In this electoral strategy document Collective Power Network lays out a concrete plan for how to not only put more socialists in office, but to carry out the crucial work of building effective mass organization.
Preface
This document is intended as a programmatic guide for DSA chapters on building a successful socialist electoral program to build working-class political power. It gives concrete guidance to answer key questions for the left:
How can socialists win elections?
How do we make our endorsements matter?
How do we tell real fighting candidates seeking our endorsement from opportunists?
How do we hold candidates accountable to us?
How can electoral work facilitate working class formation?
This strategy is largely based on the work of Metro DC DSA’s electoral program which, cycle after cycle, has succeeded in building power by electing socialists. It also draws lessons from observing other highly-successful DSA electoral programs such as those in New York, Chicago, Philly, and also Pittsburgh during the 2018 cycle.
Since 2017, Metro DC DSA has been instrumental in electing a County Executive of a million-plus resident county, three State Legislators, a State Board of Education member, and the first socialist on the DC council in over forty years.
Candidates have noticed this too. They understand that our endorsement is more than yet another logo on their website or mailers, but has the weight and muscle of a real organization behind it. So when we ask them to take bold stances, they do so knowing we have the means to back them up rather than leaving them to twist in the wind.Our candidates recognize our role in their victory.
Our chapter has taken leadership roles in forging both electoral and non-electoral coalitions such as the fight for rent control and the growing movement to defund the MPD. By building effective coalitions we’ve been able to deliver significant material resources towards victory, and fight for our demands amidst nasty attacks by our enemies and even during a global pandemic. These coalitions persist after the election and serve as the launchpad for taking the struggle into the legislative and non-electoral arenas, a strategy similar toNYC DSA’s successful twinned electoral and rent control campaigns. But none of that is possible without effective organization and clear strategy.
This strategy doesn’t guarantee victory; no strategy can. Our chapter has lost elections and has made errors in its campaigns. But following this strategy does mean shunning many of the most common mistakes the left has made that have doomed electoral efforts to failure and irrelevance. Like other successful DSA electoral programs we have avoided becoming just a voter guide, just an email list, or just another small grouping running a stunt campaign on their own cleverly-named ballot line.
Winning an election is not the same as winning power. Going up against the ruling class means going against the most powerful enemy of justice and equality the world has ever seen. In the final conflict the capitalist class will not respect democracy if it means a serious threat to the dictatorship of capital. Only socialism and workers’ government can produce real democracy and justice.
But at the same time our ability to win matters. Without victories, our movement loses momentum and eventually stops moving at all. By winning, we demonstrate that these ideas, once thought of as fringe or impossible, are now the center of the debate.It should be obvious that decades of self-imposed isolation and chasing ballot lines as a substitute for effective organization has only reinforced marginalization. A multiracial working-class democratic socialist constituency exists if we do the work to grow it.
A mass workers’ party isn’t going to fall from the sky. Building DSA as an effective mass organization is not ancillary to our goals, but essential to it. We consider the strategy presented here to be a battle-tested field guide for building the victories and organization necessary to win.
Introduction: For Electoral Organizing
Everywhere the ruling class is contesting for power is terrain for class struggle. Just as the workplace and the apartment house are sites of power and hence of struggle between classes, so too is the ballot box. The stakes are real and they are high: control of state power can mean the difference between victories that can raise the sights of millions of workers or another long document rationalizing yet another defeat. While we reject the notion that socialism can be won at the ballot box alone, we do not believe that ignoring electoral struggles is a viable path towards socialist power, and having socialists in office can create more favorable conditions at the grassroots by demonstrating the strength of our base to other political actors, as well as ensuring we have a greater ability to institutionalize what we’ve won by translating our demands into legislation.
We Can Win
DSA has shown that it can win electoral contests. This document is inspired by the lessons learned by CPN electoral organizers, both from their own campaigns and from observation and conversation about DSA electoral campaigns elsewhere. DSA campaigns guided by the following CPN-endorsed principles have succeeded in electing candidates to a wide variety of state and local positions in a wide variety of political terrains. We know these fights can be won because they have been won. Still, winning requires following the correct strategies.
We Can Exercise Direct Power
Winning elections matters. Winning a city council race can mean the difference between having or not having robust rent control laws, strong protections for undocumented workers, living wages, and more. While electoral organizing is only one terrain of struggle, it is still an indispensable one for socialists.
We Can Shape the Terrain for Other Organizing
Electoral campaigns allow socialists to institutionalize and build off what we are able to win through mobilization and deep organizing. Electing socialists magnifies the potential scale of our victories when they occur. For example, it is easier to do labor organizing when we defeat “Right to Work” laws. It is easier to do tenant organizing when we win robust rent control and tenant protections. Our pressure campaigns are more likely to succeed when the politicians we are seeking to pressure are aligned with our movement, or who have reason to fear that a challenge led by us could unseat them.
We Can Build Mass
Politics exists in the millions. While our work in other fields of struggle has a direct effect on our ability to run effective socialist candidates, electoral organizing presents unique opportunities for the left in growing and diversifying our organization, and expanding our layer of leadership. While there are certainly specific non-electoral campaigns that present similar opportunities, electoral organizing simply takes place at a much larger scale than most of our work usually does. It gives us specific in-roads to communities and coalitions we would not otherwise have access to and the scale of these campaigns gives many more members the chance to participate in a meaningful way while interacting directly with workers in our communities.
Meeting people where they are means we must have a robust and dynamic approach to electoral work. We have seen how engaging in electoral campaigns, most notably the Bernie Sanders campaigns for president in the 2016 and 2020 cycles, have led to by far the largest engagement and membership growth of any DSA campaign. DSA membership surges whenever we have major electoral wins, for example after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her congressional seat. While campaigns like Bernie represent unique historical opportunities that can’t necessarily be replicated at will, electoral organizing as an approach is a critical avenue to growing our influence, our size, our diversity, and our power.
Therefore, we believe that DSA should engage in strategically-oriented electoral organizing and that, contingent on local conditions, chapters should place a high priority on strategically oriented electoral organizing both for its own sake and as a strategy for supporting other campaigns whenever feasible.
Part 1: Organizational Orientation
For a Dynamic Mass Organization, Not Third Party
The point for socialists is not to own a ballot line, the point is to secure a government democratically controlled by the working class. Recent DSA experience has shown that strategic use of the Democratic Party ballot line has had an undeniable positive impact for the left and appears to be by far the surest path to doing so.
Fixating on the Democratic Party, either as an object for conquest, a villain to be destroyed, or a group to split from is strategically misplaced and misunderstands what that Party is. The Democratic Party of today is not a political party in the sense of historical socialist or communist parties. They are neither funded by member dues nor do they have strong mechanisms to enforce party discipline on members who are elected on their ballot line. Rather, the Democrats are a semi-governmental ballot line, a nexus of party functionaries, consultancies, and donors, and finally a powerful brand which commands the voting loyalties of a huge proportion of the country’s voters. Especially true among the voters we need to build a governing majority.
Unlike in most countries when you register your party affiliation you don’t go to that party’s local headquarters, you register with the state. This is highly unique to the United States and means that superimposing European left electoral models onto our conditions is deeply misleading. Because of this unique governmental party system the ballot line simply cannot be controlled, either by us or the Party establishment. In the vast majority of states and electoral contests (presidential caucuses being a notable exception) the ballot line of the Democratic Party is owned and operated by the state itself. Leadership can and does influence primary elections, but they cannot dictate who uses their ballot line; that is determined by a plurality of whoever chooses to vote in a Democratic Party Primary or Caucus.
By developing a party-like structure within DSA and using the Democratic ballot line where necessary, DSA can continue to both exercise democratic control over our own candidate selection and candidate discipline while also continuing to actually elect socialists to office. We believe that the left has been more successful electorally in the last four years than the last 50 years, in part due to the strategic orientation put forward in works such as “A Blueprint for A New Party.” To turn back on this model at this point would be a massive error.
Therefore, we support continuing to strategically use the Democratic ballot line to elect socialists. We reject the idea that third party ballot lines are a necessary precondition of a workers party or that pursuit of independent ballot lines as an end unto itself. Our goal is for strategic campaigns that grow the capacity and diversity of our organization, bring our ideas to a mass audience, and reshape the political terrain upon which the workers movement operates. In most cases the Democratic ballot line will be the most effective tactic to meet those ends.
For Maintaining DSA Control on DSA Campaign Efforts
To the extent possible, DSA should maintain strategic and operational control of DSA member efforts on behalf of endorsed candidates. DSA should not simply be a clearinghouse for sending volunteers directly to campaigns to be used and directed for whatever purposes the candidate prefers outside of DSA’s priorities. State election laws often mandate this kind of separation between candidates’ campaigns and outside efforts from supporter groups such as DSA.
In addition to getting the candidate elected, DSA also builds power by influencing the campaign to take a class struggle orientation where possible, for example via walksheet design, canvassing scripts, and targeting neighborhoods more likely to be receptive to these messages. New volunteers often come to electoral canvasses as their first DSA event, so when DSA controls the canvass it can also control the pre- and post-canvass trainings and socials, which are instrumental in bringing these new members fully into DSA and beginning them along their path of political development.
Therefore, we support DSA maintaining as much control or influence as possible on the campaigns of our endorsed candidates to the extent possible given local circumstances.
For Building Durable Labor & Progressive Coalitions
DSA candidates typically have a much harder time winning when left & labor forces are disunited. Socialist-oriented voters broadly, much less just DSA members specifically, are nowhere near a majority in the vast majority of America. Nowhere in America does DSA have the funding capacity to sustain a contested campaign. Thus, we must cultivate and maintain strong labor and progressive coalitions to help ensure victory whenever possible.
This centrality of building trusted partnerships with labor groups is one (of many) important reasons that DSA must have a dynamic and nuanced approach in our non-electoral labor organizing. DSA cannot, from outside and from a position of weakness, force unions to take a huge risk of moving far to the left when a miscalculated step can cost union members dearly. DSA’s labor strategy must be multifaceted, building relationships with labor leaders where possible, while building trust among both organized and unorganized workers by proving that we are a serious organization that can secure real material benefits for working people.
Until DSA is larger, stronger, and has proven itself by years of winning, we will be incapable of imposing our agenda wholesale and thus our influence is best exercised within left-labor electoral coalitions. Indeed, DSA can operate as a leader and first mover in these coalitions, providing the rigorous analysis and a committed volunteer base that rivals almost anything extant on the left, which purchases DSA significant influence in these coalitions. CPN-led electoral campaigns have extracted policy concessions from left-labor alliances in such ways.
Therefore, we support building and sustaining labor and progressive coalitions as part of DSA campaigns. The likelihood of marshaling such a coalition should be a major factor in deciding whether or not to endorse in a given race.
For a Strong National Electoral Committee
The goal of our electoral program is not to elect lone dissenting voices across the country, but to link growing numbers of socialist electeds in a nationwide movement. We believe this is only possible with a strong national organization. The National Electoral Committee (NEC) must take on the responsibility of building relationships directly with candidates and elected officials, in addition to the relationships that candidates have with local DSA electoral programs. This will give candidates stronger connections to the democratic socialist movement and view themselves rightly as a part of it. The NEC should maintain these relationships even after the elections, serving as a source for model legislation and political support during their time in office. We cannot afford to elect candidates and then simply just move on to the next campaign.
The NEC should be governed by electoral strategy documents debated by the National Political Committee that make clear which races to target and prioritize. The National Electoral Committee should commit to serious fundraising efforts and establish a national PAC. Such an organization, depending upon the particular campaign finance regulations of each race, could make direct contributions to nationally endorsed candidates or fund the local chapter’s efforts. The National Electoral Committee should also take on work that some chapters may not have the skillset for including: designing walk cards and literature, providing advice on campaign finance, administering VAN access, and helping chapters set up their campaigns.
It is also essential that political activity gets coordinated on the regional level. An electoral campaign that may be nonviable with involvement from one chapter, may be successful with commitments from those nearby. Strong democratic regional organizations could also share resources like campaign finance committees, better manage legislative pushes, and mobilize larger numbers of members for essential times during campaigns like “Get Out the Vote” operations.
Therefore, we believe a strong and proactive National Electoral Committee is essential to growing the socialist movement as a force that can govern. It must take a proactive role in working with electeds, serving as ambassadors of our electoral strategy and aims to those in office, and help ensure we are pursuing an effective and integrated electoral approach across chapters and regions.
Part 2: Campaign Strategies & Tactics
For Mass Canvassing
As a cash-poor but volunteer-rich organization, DSA’s main electoral approach should be building large-scale canvassing operations. Canvassing is proven to be one of the most effective means of winning elections, both by persuading voters to provide support and in identifying existing supporters to motivate them to actually show up and vote. DSA’s unique canvassing capabilities help distinguish our organization from others. A chapter that can field fifty people to a canvass launch will make it one of the most effective political organizations in a region. Canvassing metrics, like doors knocked or volunteer numbers, also serve as an easy metric for demonstrating the value of DSA as a coalition partner.
Canvassing, especially when DSA can use and retain its own voter information system (e.g. the DSA instance of VAN), allows us to identify supporters not only of a particular candidate but also those who might be allies or supporters of other campaigns and struggles in the future. Canvassing also provides DSA organizers with essential skills that can be used for non-electoral efforts.
Therefore, we support building large scale canvassing operations as part of almost any DSA electoral campaign.
Against Astro-Turf Campaigning
Many campaign strategies such as hotspot flyering, hosting small house parties, or sinking massive amounts of money into mailers or other paid media can have some utility, but for DSA campaigns the opportunity cost of diverting volunteers or scarce funds away from canvassing is almost never a wise use of resources. Other campaigns do them, not necessarily because they are the most effective, but rather because they do not have what we have: a dedicated army of volunteers willing and able to put in the work of canvassing.
Therefore, we do not support diverting time, people, or resources away from canvassing operations unless there is a clear, fact-based case for why some other strategy would better support candidate victory and build power.
Part 3: Candidate Selection
For Running to Win
A candidate with no reasonable path to victory cannot build power for socialism. Having good politics should be necessary but not sufficient for a candidate to gain DSA support. Successful grassroots electoral campaigning requires people power and it is impossible to rally the number of volunteers needed, as well as maintain the high levels of volunteer motivation needed, without a clear sense that such hard work might pay off. People do not want to give up hours of their time for a lost cause.
Running large numbers of losing campaigns is also disastrous to DSA’s reputation: it damages our ability to build credibility among allies and to pose credible threats to our opponents if we consistently demonstrate that we are weak.
Therefore, we support limiting endorsements to only candidates with a clear and compelling path to victory.
Against Paper Endorsements
Building power means using DSA’s endorsement strategically. An endorsement with no resources behind it, with no substantial boon towards candidate victory, is a powerless endorsement. Powerless endorsements dilute the impact of powerful endorsements and weaken the reputation of the organization making them. Why would a candidate make concessions to win an endorsement or feel accountable to the endorsing organization if that endorsement has little material impact on their chance of victory?
Paper endorsements are endorsements that can exist simply on paper: the organization sends an announcement in support of a candidate and allows the candidate to place the organization’s logo on their promotional materials, but the organization does not invest time, money, or other organizational resources into helping elect that candidate. Paper endorsements only have power when the endorsement announcement sends a strong enough signal to move large numbers of voters who have a high enough trust in that signal to alter their voting behavior. In no jurisdiction does DSA have anywhere near enough members or fellow travelers (much less the level of political discipline among those members) for a simple endorsement announcement to move a decisive number of votes in and of itself. Losses, even for candidates that were just endorsed on paper, will still be used by our political opponents as proof that democratic socialism does not have a viable future.
Therefore, we oppose endorsements that do not make DSA a significant factor towards candidate victory, thus undermining candidate accountability to DSA.
Against Over-Endorsing
A corollary to only running races where DSA can be a major part of the winning coalition and invest enough to be a major factor in the candidate’s victory is that that is impossible when DSA endorses so many candidates that DSA resources and attention are stretched beyond capacity.
Individual candidates should not be considered in a vacuum, but rather in relation all other potential candidate endorsements as well as non-electoral work. There is a clear opportunity cost: DSA member time spent on one candidate cannot be spent on other candidates in non-overlapping jurisdictions. If a DSA chapter only has the resources to credibly support one candidate, it should not endorse more than one candidate. A candidate may have excellent politics and prospects, but are they the best campaign in the cycle to build power for socialism?
Saying “No” to candidates seeking endorsement can be a good thing, it preserves the exclusivity of DSA endorsements as something valuable and worth pursuing. We should avoid the trap many other progressive organizations have fallen into of endorsing every candidate that shares agreement even when only a handful are viable. Our endorsement is not a seal of approval, it is an organizational commitment that has a knock-on effect on every other area of work we can and cannot then engage in. This exclusivity can also be a means for inducing policy concessions from candidates who would not otherwise offer them. By saying no to candidates with good politics when they don’t fit the strategic needs of the chapter, it makes clear that we won’t subordinate our organization to a candidate’s needs.
Therefore, we support limiting the number of endorsements in a particular cycle and location to only the most strategic candidates and to only as many candidates as the local chapter(s) have capacity to maintain a significant part of the winning coalition. We also support endorsing no more candidates in a race as there are seats available in that race.
Towards Developing Candidates from Within DSA
Since DSA’s rise to national prominence is still so recent, we have had to rely on candidates whose primary identity is adjacent to but not primarily situated in DSA or the socialist movement. This is understandable and acceptable for now since the benefits of electing socialists is clear. We do feel that endorsed candidates should be at least paper members of DSA.
However, DSA should move towards identifying, developing, and elevating potential candidates for political office from within DSA cadre. These cadre will be less likely to see DSA’s aims as external to their own and DSA will have more accountability mechanisms to deploy on such candidates, all of which allow for more democratic control of these seats rather than having them held by lone individuals.
Therefore, while we recognize the need to currently endorse many non-cadre, we support developing the capacity in DSA to select more and more of our endorsed candidates from existing DSA cadre.
Part 4: Endorsement Process
For Endorsing Early
Too many chapters make the mistake of releasing their endorsements too late in an election cycle and thereby forfeiting significant power. By being the first mover to endorse in a left-labor alliance, DSA can make previously less viable candidates suddenly seem viable (“Look, they got the DSA endorsement”) and prompt allies to endorse our preferred candidates to maintain progressive unity. This credibility is built up over time through proving ourselves as a serious political organization.
Also, grassroots, canvassing-heavy campaigns require significant amounts of time to build up. One or two weekends of canvassing is not sufficient to win a campaign, it requires months of work and that means the endorsement needs to be in place long enough to establish DSA electoral working group structures, fundraise, recruit volunteers, and sustain months of canvassing operations.
Therefore, we support making electoral endorsements early in their respective cycles. DSA should use early endorsements to demonstrate the viability of our endorsed candidates and consolidate progressive and labor support around them.
For a Rigorous Process
Flimsy endorsement processes are easier to game, both by candidates and by DSA members prominent in their chapter with personal rather than collective agendas.
As part of the candidate endorsement process, chapters should use questionnaires, candidate forums, and other vetting mechanisms to draw clear lines which align with the chapter priorities and force candidates to state clearly where they stand relative to those lines. These lines should be developed via democratic process on the chapter level to reflect local conditions.
There is, however, one line we feel should be universal across all chapters: DSA should only endorse candidates who consider themselves democratic socialists and who are willing to state so publicly (though the degree to which they incorporate that label in their campaigning is subject to local conditions).
An endorsement process is the first test of a candidate’s courage. If they don’t have the guts to take tough stances when seeking endorsement, how likely are they to summon the courage to fight for the working class? It is far better to discover the candidate is a coward before endorsing rather than after sinking DSA effort and reputation to secure their victory. This means candidates seeking endorsements should be forced to answer yes or no questions about specific positions before offering a further elaboration, in order to avoid diplomatically (or deceptively) worded answers.
Therefore, we support chapter level mechanisms for establishing clear positions that DSA considers priorities and extracting clear answers from candidates on those positions.
For an Informed Process
The endorsement process must present a clear view of the candidate to membership. Thus, chapter endorsement processes must be sufficiently rigorous and incorporate sufficient political education for chapter members to ensure a vote that is informed, considered, and democratic.
To accomplish this, the endorsement process must not be overly rushed and entail some degree of organizational centralization regarding process. If members do not truly know and understand the candidate and the context of their race, the endorsement vote ceases to be truly democratic as members may cede undue influence to charismatic candidates or charismatic individuals in the chapter.
In addition to questionnaires and forums, there must be debate, and this debate must not just be about whether the candidate has good or bad politics, but must also include broader strategic considerations: is supporting this candidate the best use of our time, resources, and reputation?
To meet this end we support chapters having clearly delegated “electoral committees” that are responsible for processing and managing endorsement resolutions to come before the chapter. They would help ensure there is proper vetting of candidates and that proposals before the general membership are given proper context. The purpose of such a committee would not be to be simply a disinterested administrator however. Such committees should be chaired by members directly elected to the position by, and accountable to, the general membership. They would ideally present recommendations on endorsements that come before the chapter but general membership would have the final say.
Therefore, we support establishing an endorsement process that is deliberate and ensures members know not only the candidate they are voting on but also the strategic context in which the vote takes place. We support the creation of chapter level “electoral committees” to shepherd this process in a political way and help ensure strategic and political context is incorporated into decisions on endorsements.
Against Any Non-Endorsed Campaigning
DSA members should not be allowed to use DSA resources or purport to speak for DSA in support of non-endorsed candidates. DSA members representing themselves as part of DSA but who do not receive a DSA endorsement should be grounds for discipline.
Therefore, we support strictly limiting the use of DSA resources, platforms, and logo/name to only support candidates who have been formally endorsed.
It’s hard to keep up when the world lurches from pandemic to racial justice uprising seemingly overnight. After months of living in a quarantine pressure cooker, amidst a global pandemic that’s thrown millions out of work, exposed the vicious inequities of our current capitalist system and killed hundreds of thousands, masses of people hit a breaking point.
Fueled by their righteous rage about the videotaped killing of George Floyd, people have flooded the streets and taken the fight against structural racism and police violence to new heights. Protests, marches, memorials — fierce and creative — have radiated out from Minneapolis, and across the world, from Mexico City to Copenhagen to East Jerusalem and beyond.
There’s also a growing list of more intangible wins, including:
Ongoing massive public dialogue about defunding police, racial inequality and oppression.
Widespread private conversations happening about race and privilege across/within families and many communities that have benefitted from white privilege. (See this important reminder from the Nap Ministry.)
“Defund the Police!” has moved from fringe idea to nearly law of the land so fast, pundits have motion sickness. It shows what can happen when progressive ideas are backed by true people power in a kind of “People’s Shock Doctrine.” (This phenomenon is an inversion of the “Shock Doctrine” that Naomi Klein observed, in which a traumatized population cedes control to corporate power in a moment of crisis.)
So how has all of this moved so quickly?
One answer lies in the massive scale of mobilization — protests in all 50 U.S. states, including many small, predominately-white rural communities, as well as many cities around the world. Black-led organizations and networks were already in place and ready to lead. Since the formation of Black Lives Matter, or BLM, in 2013, this female-led movement has continued to emphasize the development of young leaders and to innovate strategy and tactics. After its first national in-person action in Ferguson in 2014 following the killing of Michael Brown, the movement has honed its campaigning strategy using nonviolent direct action. It drew on the tradition of Black freedom movement and embraced the intersectionality of Black lives, while pushing for bold systemic changes to end racialized oppression.
Another factor is the sheer fierceness of the response — the willingness to take to the streets in spite of, or because of, quarantine. The creative, distributed, self-organized style of civic engagement, with protests happening organically, aligned in principles and demands across geographic distance has also played an important role. And all this activity has been aided and abetted by access to cell phones and social media — with hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #WeKeepUsSafe driving the growth and reach of organizing across both rural communities and international networks in record speed.
A less obvious piece of the answer is that these actions have been built — consciously or unconsciously — on a supercharged set of principles for making beautiful trouble. For those who are committed to continuing the struggle, and potentially escalating or innovating tactics to increase effectiveness, it can be helpful to take a deeper look at some of the principles and theories behind what is being done on the frontlines of this growing insurrection in defense of Black lives.
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Direct action A tool that oppressed people have used to build their power throughout history. When communities don’t have billions of dollars to spend, they leverage risk. They put their bodies, freedom and safety on the line.
As Frederick Douglass famously noted, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” In this moment, demands have coalesced around defunding the police and reimagining community security for a world that will have moved beyond anti-Black racism and other oppressions.
But what has allowed these protests to press those demands so effectively? Beyond their scale and breadth, it’s their staying power and intensity; they are un-permitted, ongoing and willing to disrupt business-as-usual. It’s this combination that has allowed activists in the streets to build power.
It’s not enough to be angry. But when you also have the moral high ground, — which is clearly the case for BLM — then that anger can grow your support and build your movement.
In addition, the protests themselves are a “virtuous circle,” if also a brutal one. Every time the cops use disproportionate force to try to contain the protests, they prove the protesters’ point. As famed community organizer Saul Alinsky said, “The real action is your opponent’s reaction.”
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone sits on the site of an abandoned police station in Seattle. Twitter/@pgcornwell
In Seattle, an abandoned police station has become the hub of an ongoing occupation, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ. A long-standing direct action tactic, occupations can become ground zero for intense protest activity and cultural shifts, as well as prefigurative experiments in new ways of living and being. On the downside, ongoing occupations can also be highly resource and time intensive, putting many burdens on the activists involved.
Use the power of ritual Rituals like weddings, funerals, baptisms, exorcisms and vigils are powerful experiences for participants. By adapting sacred and symbolic elements you can use the power of ritual to give your actions greater depth and power.
Rituals can connect us to the deepest truths of why politics matters. In a crisis, ritualized expression can not only help people cope, band together and grieve losses, but can also make collective meaning from traumatic events, and build new stories for our path ahead.
As the world grieves untimely deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic and from police violence, the saying of the names of those we’ve lost helps us focus our grief, validate the lives of the fallen and re-commit ourselves to action. Many ancient traditions are reflected in some of today’s ritualized call and response chants that ring out in the streets: “Say her name … Breonna Taylor. Say his name … George Floyd.”
The fence surrounding the White House in Washington, D.C., became a focal point, a shrine, for creative statements and ritualized decoration, embodying demands and visions of the people. Similarly the fence surrounding the Silver Lake Reservoir in Los Angeles became a memorial to those killed by police violence, as artists tied strips of fabric to spell out the names of those murdered.
The traditional African ritual of altar building was the cornerstone of actions called for by the Black Feminist Futures group, providing a container for community-building, safety and “honoring our ancestors who declared unapologetically that Black Lives Matter.”
Online rituals, like “The Soul of a Crisis” — an ongoing candlelight vigil, meditation and dialogue circle that began during the global quarantines in March — have provided additional space for reflection, processing and the important work of envisioning the systems change needed to dismantle structural racism and violence.
The Say Their Names Cemetery memorial in Minneapolis. Twitter/@marciaxthree
Joy is a revolutionary force Protests can be fun! Find pleasure in the process and let your creativity and joy guide you. As adrienne maree brown said: “Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom.”
Activists dance the electric slide in Stockton, California. (Twitter/@shumensa13)
Through engagement with arts and culture in programs like “Black Joy Sundays,” BLM has intentionally created a space for Black activists to focus on themselves and positive expression. And it’s not just on Sundays: The “electric slide” line dance has recently become a trademark of the protests, moving minds and bodies together.
Music has long had an important role in Black resistance movements, and it is still true today, though the anthems are more likely to be remixes of impromptu standups or popular joyful rap songs than folk hits of the civil rights era. And these beats seem to better capture the mood of defiance and joy that characterizes the energy of the protests.
In a modern take on the importance of music in protest movements, Korean pop music fans have shown their solidarity with BLM by flooding a police reporting line with K-pop fan videos — thus jamming the app, disrupting the flow of racist and pro-police posts and forcing them to take the app down.
Take risks, but take care Needlessly endangering the safety of you or the people around you hurts the movement. Don’t sacrifice care of self or others for the sake of being “hardcore.”
In-person and online healing events offer a way to ground the work and support each other’s physical and mental wellbeing. “This commitment,” said Katie Petitt of Current Movements, “led BLM DC to establish free access for all Black organizers to many kinds of healing modalities” through a Healers for Liberation program. It has been so successful that other groups have started to do similar programs.
An emphasis on healing justice and embracing the positives in Movement for Black Lives grew out of the need to fight systemic racist oppression and — at the same time — uplift Black lives and resilience. This emphasis on infusing healing and humanity into activist campaigns is a gift to the broader movement for social justice.
Making the invisible visible Many injustices are invisible to the mainstream. When you bring these wrongs into full view, you change the game, making the need to take action palpable.
Given that these protests started during a pandemic, there should be no surprise at the popularity of guerrilla projections, which can be done with small teams easily social distancing. In Seattle, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is showing outdoor movies for inspiration and political education.
George Floyds image was projected onto the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Virginia earlier this month. Facebook/Dustin Klein
Moving fast to play catch-up with the flurry of events, elected officials have started to embrace art-activist tactics, only to be subverted by those in the movement. To rankle the president, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, commissioned a huge Black Lives Matter painting on 16th Street near the White House. However, very quickly BLM and other local activists edited the mural to call for defunding the police, just to make sure she got the movement’s message to reduce, not raise, the police budget.
Similarly, huge and beautiful street murals went up in Berkeley, California and Charlotte, North Carolina, alongside many gorgeous and provocative paintings on boarded up buildings like those in Oakland, California. Street murals make a bold statement and can be done in relative safety during physical distancing. Some murals have taken to the sky, like this one of George Floyd’s last words pulled by a plane. Big, beautiful images also help do the media’s job for them, providing a frame about the story for the public.
Do your research Whether you’re scouting an action location, doing a power analysis of your political target, or reviewing previous events — don’t skip the research.
Documentation has been essential to the success of BLM. Activists have been working to systematically track the all-too-widespread occurrences of police brutality in a crowdsourced spreadsheet. Murder-by-police captured on video has been instrumental in pushing authorities to hold officers accountable, support calls for defunding, and make the case that that these racist and brutal behaviors are institutional across the police force — not just the work of a few “bad apples.” Successful campaigns to defund police, ICE, and mass incarceration, also may rely on data mined by organizations like the American Friends Service Committee’s Investigate database. This work is equal parts making-the-invisible-visible and political education.
Radical book clubs and teach-ins have been popping up as community members demand anti-racist curriculum and instruction, or move to educating themselves to be more strategic and/or better allies and participants in the struggle. And books on racial justice are on backorder, including “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective” edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” by Resmaa Menakem.
On the fourth anniversary of the Pulse shootings, The Illuminator projected this message supporting Black trans lives onto the Brooklyn Bridge. (Instagram/@the.illuminator)
Looking ahead
There are signs of escalation on all fronts. The Divider-in-Chief was planning his first post-COVID-19 rally for Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19, or “Juneteenth.” It’s no coincidence that this city was the site of one of the worst race massacres in U.S. history — when in 1921 Black neighborhoods were burned to the ground and an estimated 300 African Americans murdered by a white mob. While pressure forced him to postpone the rally to the following day, it is still happening on the weekend of the anniversary of the abolition of slavery. As Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted, this “isn’t just a wink to white supremacists, he’s throwing them a welcome home party.” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg condemned the move under the headline: “A racist president trolls his enemies with a rally on Juneteenth.”
BLM leaders are rightly furious, yet also recognize Trump’s tactical provocation for what it is. With protests already gearing up, what’s our movement’s best move? How can the fierce and innovative nonviolent action continue in the face of this kind of deliberate trolling and provocation?
The unfolding insurrection has been a master class in creative protest. The hope here is that by reflecting on the extraordinary creativity of the recent BLM uprising — through the lens of generations of social movement best-practices — activists will find ways to keep our eyes on the prize, as we continue to escalate strategically and build power. Even the rarely optimistic Ta-Nehisi Coates has said, “I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I see hope. I see progress right now.”
In whatever way you’re taking action, Beautiful Trouble is here to support. Our training materials are easy to find and use for street protests. Here are our three most relevant resources right now:
Over the past two weeks, the US has seen some of the largest, most militant protests and riots in decades. The now nationwide movement began in Minneapolis following the police murder of George Floyd. The anger that followed led to mass demonstrations, confrontations with the police, arson and looting, mourning and rebellion that spread across the country within a matter of hours. The Minneapolis Third Precinct station house, where the murderers had worked, was burned to the ground, and police cars were set aflame from New York to LA in the most widespread damage to the punitive edifices of the US state seen in this century, fueled by decades of anger at racist policing and the ceaseless stream of police murders of Black people. Now, even the reform-oriented electoral left is seriously discussing a softened version of police abolition on a national level, re-imagined as “defunding,” and the Minneapolis City Council has pledged to “disband” the city’s police department. Not long ago, such a demand would have been considered utopian.
As the movement against police brutality and the institution of the police itself rapidly unfolds across the US, we have already seen in it the marks of other riots and mass struggles that emerged across the globe in the past year, from Chile to France, Lebanon, Iraq, Ecuador and Catalonia, to name but a few. Here, any broad analysis of the rebellion in the US would be premature, as the fires of the riots are literally still burning in cities across the country. Instead we would like to offer a few brief observations regarding thestrugglesinHongKong, which we’ve done our best to follow closely, focusing on one particular tactical innovation that we feel might be a helpful contribution to ongoing protests in the US and beyond. We have already seen people in the streets adopting scattered lessons from Hong Kong and other hotspots in past year’s global cycle of rebellions: an arguably Hong Kong-style barricade of Target carts outside the embattled third precinct building in Minneapolis, techniques for extinguishing tear gas in Portland, reports of lasers dazzling police cameras and visors in severalcities, umbrellas held up against pepper spray at protests in Columbus and Seattle, and graffiti shout-outs to Hong Kongers on boarded-up or looted storefronts in multiple cities. The similarities were so striking, in fact, that it led the paranoid editor-in-chief of Chinese state media tabloid The Global Times, Hu Xijin, to conclude that “Hong Kong rioters have infiltrated the United States” and “masterminded” the attacks.
“You see people very effectively deploying Hong Kong tactics here, deploying Hong Kong tactics here, to stop these tear gas from gassing protesters and vehicles”
We can do little to guide the way this movement unfolds (nor would we want to), but we hope that some of the tools and tactics employed by our friends and comrades in Hong Kong might be of use to those in the streets of other cities.1 In particular, we offer for your consideration the evolution of the “frontline” role in the Hong Kong movement, in hopes that it might be helpful in bridging gaps between militants and peaceful participants in the streets elsewhere.
As in past movements, there have already been significant disagreements about how to engage with the forces of the state in the US. As with other movements since Ferguson and before, some (but not all) formal activist organizations have begun to engage with the “soft” wing of the local repressive apparatus, springing into action to tamp down the militancy of the initial uprising: “Community leaders” collaborate with the police, walking crowds into ambushes and kettles, and literally point out “violent” protestors in the crowd. Meanwhile, local governments nationwide claim that those initiating property destruction or fighting the police are “outside agitators,” with the mayor of Seattle tweeting that “much of the violence and destruction, both here and across the country, has been instigated and perpetuated by white men.” But it is abundantly clear that pent-up rage against the police is extremely widespread, and on the streets a broad consensus has emerged that they must be opposed.
Hong Kong may offer one path that escapes the seeming inevitability of conflicts over violence, nonviolence, and how to engage with the forces of the state. For those who are looking for a new way to bridge gaps between militant and peaceful forms of participation, we think one of the city’s most important contributions to the new era of struggles has been the development of particular roles and formations to be deployed on the streets, as well the structures behind them that helped to better link those willing to fight the cops with others in the movement. In particular, we want to highlight the concept of Hong Kong’s “frontliners,” who not only developed many successful techniques for confronting the police, but also established a new kind of relationship between the militant and nonviolent elements of street actions through many months of experimentation.
more umbrellas on the front line here in seattle. we are about five minutes past curfew and so far it’s still really peaceful. if you want to watch the live dm me for the link pic.twitter.com/ZyKMoGe0PL
What does it mean to be “on the front line?” The term has become incredibly popular the past few months across languages and social domains, especially in reference to medical workers and others who are particularly vulnerable to the ongoing pandemic. This has obscured the original surge in popularity of the term in mainstreammediacoverage last year, where it referred to protesters in various parts of the world. The official adulations for workers coming off shift in Wuhan and New York strike us strange, state-orchestrated echoes of the cheer “¡vivan lxs de la primera línea!” that had greeted protesters returning from battles with the police in Chile last fall. What allowed for the versatile, and seemingly opposed, mobilizations of this term was precisely its ability to integrate otherwise divided activities in an effective way, proposing a unity defined not by homogeneity but by support for the overall struggle, symbolized by those at the “frontline.” Now, with the return of riots to the US, it seems possible that the use of the term may again turn to those facing off against the police: In Connecticut, a line of black-clad protesters faces the police wearing masks that must have first been intended to prevent the spread of the virus, and in a blurry screenshot of the moment, a woman holds a sign that reads, “the only allies are the ones on the frontlines.”
The basic idea allowing the concept of the frontline to integrate the movement beyond the old divides between violence and non-violence, or “diversity of tactics,” is that those on the frontlines take personal risks to protect those around them, ideally with (but often without) distinctive protective gear, and that these risks help to push forward the entire movement. This is also why the concept extended so easily to pandemic response, because the basic logic of personal risk in support of the struggle is more or less identical. But in those cases, the state had a clear interest in mobilizing the term to co-opt popular responses or disguise its own incompetence, all with the ultimate goal still being to suppress the pandemic. Now, however, the state has no such interest, since it does not share the same goal as the protestors invoking the concept of the frontline. Instead, it will pose “community leaders,” and maybe even portray them as having been “on the frontlines” of the movement in some fashion, but there is no necessity to even pretend to support those actually in conflict with the police. This means that the term has the ability to return to the meaning it gained in Hong Kong, defined through risks taken in defense of everyone or the act of putting one’s life on the line to keep everyone else safe and simultaneously push the struggle forward.
In the course of escalating street clashes throughout 2019, Hong Kong protesters produced rapid-fire innovations, including the invention of new gear and distinct formations with specific tactical positions to be filled within the body of the protest. The frontliner emerged in this context as a recognizable role for those who, with armor and tear-gas mitigation strategies, positioned themselves directly against the police, backed up by comrades in second and third lines.
Translation of slogans between Hong Kong and Chilean protests: “We cannot return to normal, because normality was the problem.”
This tactical innovation spread rapidly, first to Chile and then to other Latin American contexts. The first jump from Hong Kong to Chile was likely translated through riot porn uploaded to YouTube or simply transmitted through the heady air of the 2019 cycle of revolt. One participant in a Chilean frontline “clan” makes it clear that the tactics his group uses were adopted from Hong Kong. Soon enough, other local rioters were gearing up remarkably similar tactics, including shields, slogans, inventive construction of barricades, and the widespread adaptation of high-powered laser pointers as tools for disrupting police cameras and vision (as well as, in one memorable case, the destruction of a police drone). Beyond these specific adaptations, the structure of the Chilean movement was also organized along recognizable lines: Following a period of demonstrations against an increase in public transportation prices, including widespread organized fare evasions and large marches, a police crackdown then sparked massive demonstrations and riots that are widely referred to in Chile as a “social explosion.” In video of a protest in Plaza Italia, Santiago, Chile, one man on a building overlooking the square remarks excitedly that the demonstration “is only possible because of a group of kids”, who have organized “to stop the repressive forces.”
Through the following period, as a state of emergency was declared in cities across the country, space for peaceful demonstration was defended by a frontline of protesters willing to fight the police. As in Hong Kong, these frontliners were organized primarily by role: shield-bearers, rock throwers, medics, “miners” (producing projectiles), protesters in the back line with lasers to disrupt police vision or cameras, and barricaders to block advances. Unlike later developments in the Hong Kong “be water” strategy that emphasized wearing police out through constant movement, the Chilean movement started with frontliners setting up and defending specific lines around the “zero zone” or “red zone” to keep the cops from entering areas where other protesters were gathered. As repression increased, however, the daily clashes became essentially street by street battles between organized frontliners and the police. Still, however, the importance of the frontline as a tool to make protest possible was widely recognized by those inside the movement and out, with “representatives of the frontlines” being cheered wildly when invited to participate on talk shows. As in Hong Kong, frontliners who formed autonomous groups to defend the movement were supported by outside participants, both anonymously and as groups, as some right-wing media complained.
Similar tactics were also adopted in Colombia via Chile and Hong Kong, as groups organizing on Facebook recognized that there was a need to protect demonstrators in the student-driven movement there from police violence. However, the early members of the most prominent frontline groups declared that they would act in purely “defensive” ways rather than attacking the police directly. However, as the broader popular movement died down, opinions on these groups (characterized by their media-friendly blue shields) started to shift. Frontliners consciously adopted Hong Kong’s “be water” strategy, but this was perceived by many in the student movements as a physical abandonment of the student movement, which had not made the same tactical choices. More broadly, frontliners in the Colombian student protests were perceived as opportunistic, attempting to make media-friendly spectacle, and trying to lead marches away from agreed-upon routes. Ultimately, this type of highly inorganic “frontline” became alienated from the support they first received from the rest of the movement.
Love for the frontline in Chilean protest graffiti
Across these different contexts, the development of the role of the frontliner has marked a significant advancement in tactics for street confrontation with the police. Such tactics must, of course, change to suit particular situations, but we can learn from the continually growing global knowledge of struggle. In the decade or so following the decline of the alter-globalization movement, discussion over tactics for fighting the police largely congealed into debates over the “black bloc.” Originating in 1980s Germany, black bloc refers to the tactic of wearing matching, all-black protest gear, which prevents police from picking any individual out from a crowd. Partly because of its practical success, black-bloc actions in the US and much of Europe have been subject to endless debates that ultimately come down to the role militant action should play in street protests. In the US, the ultimate result was a détente in which protestors who supported militancy and those who could only support non-confrontational action went so far as to divide up areas of cities to prevent interaction between groups. Assertions that the black bloc protects nonviolent demonstrators (either directly or by drawing police repression and resources elsewhere) have been common points of contention, but never reached a consensus. At best, there is advocacy for a “diversity of tactics,” maybe the single best phrase to describe this fragile détente.
Early on in such movements, diversity of tactics allows for a tenuous coexistence of both militant and peaceful protest, since there are many participants and multiple marches, allowing people to distribute themselves into those locales where their preferred brand prevails. The term effectively imagines entirely different spheres in which “diverse tactics” can take place. But this is often not the case. As state repression increases and the early momentum slows, the two spheres are forced to merge. It is precisely at this point that more aggressive tactics are needed to defend the movement as a whole against the police, and to continue pushing things forward as participants’ energy wanes. On the one hand, this is when the state’s repressive function is activated, as local police are resupplied and receive backup from higher levels of government. Yet on the other, this is also the moment when the state mobilizes its apparatus of soft control in the form of community leaders, non-profits and “progressive” politicians, all of whom play an essential role in severing the tenuous tactical alliance that existed in the early days. These are, after all, the people most successful in pushing the myth of the “outside agitator,” deriding the “white anarchist” destruction of property and often literally stepping in to prevent attacks on police or even de-arrests of other protestors, after the fact encouraging people to turn over snitch videos showing who threw bottles at the police line, and flooding social media with posts claiming that cops or even white nationalists were the ones who broke the first windows.
In the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and Chile, however, in different ways and at different speeds, the assertion that the bloc protects others was turned into a clear and undeniable piece of common knowledge. This was possible partly through an erasure of any previous meanings attached to black bloc protesting and its replacement with the role of the frontliner: that protester who, by subjecting herself to grave danger and ever-present tear gas, was acting in no other capacity than the defense of everyone else in the protest from the police. This represents a shift: there is no longer a large geographic separation into two bodies of protesters (one zone for peaceful protest and another for confrontation), but instead a single body coalesced, protected at the frontline by those who have made it their role to be there. In an even broader sense, and perhaps even more importantly, the Hong Kong and Chilean protests totally reconfigured the role of black-clad, masked, and militant protesters willing to fight the police. Unlike the situation in the US, where it is often possible for media and police to collaborate in isolating militants, portraying them as separate from the main body of “good protesters” and even further distanced from the body politic at large, frontliners also came to be widely (if not completely) understood as acting in defense of everyone else, protesters and non-protesters alike, by making it possible to resist an untenable status quo.
The construction of effective solidarity between “brave militants” (勇武) and adherents to “peaceful, rational nonviolence” (和理非) was not the automatic result of the rising movement in 2019 Hong Kong, nor did it happen overnight. As is the case in the US, previous movements in Hong Kong were divided along ideological lines of militancy and nonviolence, as well as between those on the street and the “controlled opposition” of Pan-Democratic parties in the Legislative Council (LegCo).2 We must recall that the 2019 protests came after years of experimentation, including the emergence and failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement: an equally massive and largely “peaceful” protest that checked all the boxes advocated by liberal proponents of non-violence.
When that movement was so decisively defeated, the youth of Hong Kong began to agitate in new ways—at first in much smaller scale street actions, such as the odd and still controversial “Fishball Riots” of 2016. In these actions, we saw something like the frontline severed from its basis in a mass demonstration. Young people still reeling from the abject failure of 2014’s “peace, love and nonviolence” instead jumped into direct confrontation, declaring war on the cops, stacking and throwing bricks, and then piloting the “be water” strategy of refusing to hold space. At the same time, they didn’t wait to be joined by other protestors, and they made no effort to recruit. The result was that the frontlines in the Fishball Riots, such as they were, had none of the connotations of defending others that they hold now. This instance of rioting is still controversial among Hong Kongers within the protest movement because its isolated character made it into a kind of risky adventurism (not to mention the role played by far-right localists in the riots). Now, however, we see very similar tactics re-deployed and polished, but in a strikingly different context. It is as if the tactics piloted in both the (relatively) peaceful actions of 2014 and the (relatively) violent confrontations with police of 2016 were finally forced to combine in an effective synthesis.
The roots of this synthesis might be best seen near the end of the Umbrella Movement, which took shape through sometimes conflictual interactions between formal organizations and tens of thousands of autonomous participants. During the occupations of Central and, later, Mong Kok, some elements of the movement were organized centrally, with occupations focused around a “big stage” (大台) that was essentially controlled by large political organizations, particularly the two student groups: the HK Federation of Student Unions and Scholarism (a group founded by high school students), as well as the main electoral parties of the Pan-Democratic camp and a slew of established NGO activists. While these occupations could never have begun––much less sustained themselves—without huge amounts of autonomous work and action, formal organizations attempted to maintain some control over the shape the movement, and in some cases attempted to call off specific actions, some of which went on anyway without their support. Still, those in leadership positions were the groups that eventually entered into negotiations with the government. As in many western contexts, these organizations were largely oriented towards so-called “rational nonviolence.” However, tensions between radicals and those who controlled the stage rose throughout the course of the movement, reaching a peak following an attack by protesters on the LegCo building, after which nonviolent protesters and organizers labelled all militants as secret agents of Beijing or “wreckers.” On the other side, some protesters began circulating slogans calling for the main stage (and the power center it represented) to be dismantled (拆大台), and for pickets that had attempted to halt attacks on LegCo to be disbanded (散纠察).
In the wake of the failure of the Umbrella Movement and the clearance of occupations, the first period of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement—roughly from the proposal of the law in March 2019 to the two million person march on June 16—still saw rational nonviolence as the dominant tactic. However, following the government’s unwillingness to retract the law in the face of the mass nonviolent movement, and following increasingly violent police repression, a rough consensus emerged around a few basic principles: Learning from the failures of the Umbrella Movement, the new protests should not be organized around a central body and would not attempt to take and hold space. This organizational form was specifically understood in reference to the main stages of the Umbrella Movement, with “decentralization” as a slogan and organizational principle rendered in Cantonese as “without a big stage” (无大台).3
At the same time, experiences of the violence of police repression created an atmosphere of solidarity among protesters. Based on unified demands—first for the retraction of the extradition bill, and then for an inquiry into police brutality, an end to classifications of protesters as rioters, amnesty for arrestees, and universal suffrage—participants achieved a broad consensus that success would require a level of unity between militants and peaceful protesters: “no divisions, no renunciations, no betrayals” (不分化、不割席、不督灰) or, more positively, “each fighting in our own way, we climb the mountain together” (兄弟爬山,各自努力) and “the peaceful and the brave are indivisible, we rise and fall together” (和勇不分、齐上齐落). Polls of movement participants taken on the ground in early June showed that 38% of respondents believed that “radical tactics” were useful in making the state listen to protesters’ demands, but by September, 62% agreed. When asked if radical tactics were understandable in the face of state intransigence, nearly 70% already agreed in June, and by July, this percentage had risen to 90%. By September, only 2.5% of poll respondents stated that the use of radical tactics by protesters was not understandable. From the same polling, by September, over 90% of participants agreed with the statement that “Bringing peaceful and militant actions together is the most effective way to get results.”4 A similar tipping point may be emerging in the US, as nearly 80% of respondents to a nationwide poll asking whether the anger leading to the current wave of protests is “justified” respond affirmatively, and 54% state that the response to the death of George Floyd, including burning a police precinct building, is justified.
In Hong Kong, the decentralized nature of the movement, combined with the growing sense of a unified purpose shared between peaceful and militant protesters allowed for the formation and reproduction of recognizable roles in which participants could support each other in autonomously organized groups, coordinated anonymously through online tools like Telegram and forums like LIHK.org. These tools and organizational structures are worthy of a separate investigation or open-sourced protest guide in themselves: Telegram allows for the creation of extremely flexible structures while preserving anonymity, which allowed protesters and supporters to develop an entire digital ecosystem that was crucial to outmaneuvering and outwitting the police in real time. Telegram’s “Channels” feature allowed for the creation of both massive large-scale chatrooms similar to the comment feature on livestream software that protesters in the US are using. However, while these “public seas” (公海) were capable of providing some useful information, they were understood to be under police surveillance due to their public nature, and sensitive organizing was done in breakout channels with trusted friends.
Protesters also created other channels specifically for sharing police locations and escape routes, which eventually reached tens of thousands of protest participants. In these channels, posting is restricted to admins or specially designated bots, who relay verified information about the location and disposition of police forces, helping to undercut the phenomenon of runaway rumor common in any protest. This information is itself crowdsourced from individuals working as spotters on the fringes of protest marches, who send updates in designated channels according to a specific format, so that it can be easily standardized and passed on to data aggregators who monitor both scout channels and livestreams, publishing updates to announcement channels and real-time maps of police locations.
Beyond reporting functions, Telegram channels created for specific actions also allowed participants to relay information about needs (medics needed at this intersection, tear gas mitigation tools needed soon) and make collective decisions about responses in real time through voting functions. The latter allowed for quick choices such as which escape route to take to avoid a police attack. Importantly, these organizational methods drew in both militants and those who were unwilling, uninterested or (because of immigration status, disability, or other potential vulnerability to police violence) unable to participate on the frontlines: While frontliners faced off with police and their escalating violence, nonviolent supporters involved themselves in marches, as medics or by providing logistical support (moving barricade supplies, tools for dealing with tear gas, or clothes for black-clad frontliners to change into), as copwatch with video cameras, or as scouts feeding information to other supporters working as data aggregators.
Many of the ways that those “outside” the frontlines provided direct material support to frontliners on the streets: In some actions, protesters without gear would form human walls, sometimes using umbrellas, to protect frontliners while they took off the gear that would mark them for arrest on their way home. Others, while not directly participating as frontliners themselves, would facilitate property damage by using their umbrellas to shield those breaking windows from the view of cameras. Later in the movement, protesters outside the front lines would bring the individual components for molotov cocktails to actions, and formed human chains supplying frontliners with materials to rapidly resupply with bottles, gasoline, sugar and rags.
Beyond these specific support actions, simply remaining on the streets during bans on public gatherings was eventually understood as a means of supporting the movement: One friend tells the story of an anonymous older office worker on a smoke break who, having read on Telegram that a group of frontliners near his building needed to buy time before engaging with the police, walked directly up to the police line and tried to pick a fight with the cops, thinking that his identity as an older, well-dressed person might decrease his chance of getting arrested and provide more of an alibi if he did. However, this generalization of the struggle is also seen by some as one reason why the police eventually turned to the more recent strategy of kettling and mass arrest of everyone in a given area: Anyone on the streets can now be assumed to be a participant, or at least to hate the cops.
Image of protest roles from Hong Kong, translated anonymously and circulated during recent struggles
Early in the movement, however, prior to the scaling-up of police repression and arrests in the late summer and fall of 2019, the role of the frontliner was relatively clear-cut, with options for supporters to remain separate from direct police confrontation by constructing barricades, providing supplies to frontliners as they extinguished tear gas, or hiding frontliners from police while they changed out of gear. This divide was still somewhat problematic, however, as the acceptance of the frontline as a core segment of the movement gave those actually fighting the police a position of “higher merit” in some ways, with some peaceful protesters being accused of not being militant enough. But as acceptance of militant action grew alongside ever-more extreme police violence, these divisions began to break down. On the one hand, actions that were formerly understood as peaceful became associated with ever greater risk of detection and arrest.
For example, the creation and protection of “Lennon walls” of protest art and self-expression was originally understood as a completely “peaceful” mode of participation, but as the number of violent attacks on Lennon walls and arrests of the people working on them increased, it became difficult to continue participating without physical and mental preparation for violence. In the face of both police violence and the “white terror” of attacks on protesters by pro-Beijing thugs, any divide between those who were willing to put their bodies on the line and those who were committed to either lower-risk or ethically nonviolent participation became harder and harder to draw. This was particularly true as increasing numbers of protesters were arrested. For some friends, the decision to join the frontline was gradual and resulted from the gradual erosion of differences between frontline activities and other ways of supporting the movement. Other friends relayed difficult conversations they had with their elderly parents who, seeing the arrests of so many youth, resolved to join the frontline themselves to fill the gap.
— Snufkin #MaskUp #RentStrike (@Anon_Snufkin) May 29, 2020
While we have purposely focused on material tactics rather than political identity, it should be recognized that the five demands helping to provide a basis for admirable unity for protesters in Hong Kong also papered over significant political divisions. In particular, the fact that the movement was so broad-based meant that it included (and in some cases was driven by) right-wing localist sentiment. Unlike the Yellow Vests in France, which had a similarly broad base of participation, escalation of militant tactics to include property damage did not serve to drive right-wing elements out of the movement. Rather, in Hong Kong the situation was reversed, and some (but by no means all) leftists limited their participation in the movement, unwilling to chant slogans alongside nationalists calling for a revolution to “restore” Hong Kong, or to participate in marches with those waving flags of the US or colonial British regimes.
While the racial structure of US politics makes right-wing participation in the ongoing cycle of rebellion a near impossibility (despite politicians promoting lies to the contrary), the structure of the Hong Kong movement around a unifying set of five demands is also somewhat alien to the US context. While their very impossibility gave the movement room to grow, the use of even untenable demands has fallen out of fashion in the US. Following the failure of first the anti-war protests in the mid-2000s, the rise and fall of Occupy a few years later defined what would become the norm, in which an excess of demands led to the general inability to “agree upon” any at all. In the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests following the uprising in Ferguson in 2014, a similar phenomenon occurred: the “official” BLM non-profits made concrete demands for body cameras on cops and money for military equipment to be funneled into anti-racism and de-escalation trainings, but these were never the popularly endorsed demands of the streets. Instead, the movement cohered around not a demand, but an assertion: that Black Lives Matter.
It is this assertion that has returned as the cohering force of today’s uprising. At the same time, this may be changing somewhat. But there is still not yet a coherent set of demands that could unite peaceful and militant protesters rising up after the murder of George Floyd. If such demands were to arise, they would probably be basic and unlikely to be achieved without “dismantling the big stage” of business as usual in the US, much like the Five Demands from Hong Kong: general amnesty, abolition of the police, or reparations for centuries of state-sanctioned murder and forced labor. Calls to “defund the police” seem to have taken prominence now after being picked up by activist groups and local progressive politicians. But such a demand falls far short of the more popular call to abolish the police, and allows local leaders to claim that they are “defunding” police departments when in fact they are only conducting fractional budget cuts. In this sense, “defund the police” seems to be taking on a character similar to the demand for body cameras in 2014.
With or without such demands, we see the core innovation of the role of the frontliner as being embedded in the new relations that become possible: between the “frontline” and the second line, the third, and other supportive protesters. One similarity between the experiences of Hong Kong protesters and those in the streets of the US is that, while many have long experienced the ways that police repression functions, this is for many the first time (or at least one of the most severe moments) when police repression of peaceful protest is visible. In some sense, the evolving role of the frontliner was actually forced into existence by police action. Once repression of the movement in Hong Kong passed a certain point, two facts became apparent: First, police are fundamentally violent, and they will dispense that violence regardless of whether their targets are protesting peacefully or not. Second, it became apparent that if the movement was to continue, protesters would have to be able to defend themselves.
As police and National Guard reinforcements try to disperse protests in incredibly violent ways on the streets of almost every major city in the US, it seems possible that the country might see a similar tipping point in terms of the scale and intensity of repression. For those looking for ways forward—ways to support our friends and comrades, to work in solidarity, to mourn those killed by police, and to ensure that such systemic violence will end someday—one method of continuing the struggle might be found by recognizing that the role of the frontliner is to protect everyone else. So we say: welcome to the frontlines, and also to the second and third line, and to the medics and supply lines, everyone holding spaces, the illustrators and printers and distributors, the live-streamers and everyone tweeting information from police scanners. Maybe this time we can all be in it together.
“I’m happy to struggle with you” — “Me too, thanks, comrade”
Notes
Saturday, May 30 was the second day of New York City’s uprising over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and rallies and protests were flaring throughout the city. In the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, helmeted cops had kettled part of a peaceful, racially-mixed march into a residential street, just off an intersection, and advanced on protesters with waves of pepper spray, body tackles and arrests. Helicopters hovered overhead like wasps, and on one occasion, dipped low to blast the crowd with a gale of wind.
About two hours into the confrontation, I witnessed something new (to me). In a moment when the NYPD were about to escalate force against protesters, a white protester called for “white people to the front” to form a barrier between the cops and the black and brown people in the crowd. They did, in mere seconds. The white protesters held their ground, sometimes chanting, sometimes standing still. One girl even chatted up one of the cops–were they flirting?–before turning her back. After a few minutes, the protesters started walking forward, step-by-step, slowly nudging the scrum of riot cops back and out of the street. In the media coverage of these uprisings, there’s been a lot of emphasis on chaos and destruction–and no doubt there’s been chaos. But here was a diverse, angry crowd that spontaneously coalesced into an orderly, disciplined formation–one capable of pushing back riot-geared cops without the use of any violence–in about as little time as it takes to say “I can’t breathe! Hands up, don’t shoot!”
It made me choke up a little. For one, it gave me hope. I saw this as a sign that the culture of left activism and movements is changing and evolving, however slowly, to better reflect (and therefore oppose) the realities of white supremacy, including the fact that the right of white Americans to protest and be free from extra-judicial killing is usually respected, while the rights of black and brown people to do the same are not. At previous Black Lives Matters protests, I had seen black protesters tell white protesters to put their bodies on the line, only to be met with awkward silence and looks of confusion. “Are these calls divisive?” Uttered in hushed tones, the words came on the heels of a 2018 protest over the NYPD killing of Saheed Vassell in Crown Heights, the neighborhood next to Flatbush. Now, in 2020, the formation came together so quickly, almost reflexively, that I can only attribute it to a sea change in our general understanding about white supremacy and systemic racism in the US. Yes, we still have a long way to go, and maybe it will all be too-little-too-late (though I hope not). But I think it’s also important to acknowledge progress along the way. (Remember that four years ago, the idea of a “post-racial” America was not considered the laughable delusion it is seen as today.)
Second, this tactic was surprisingly effective. As the cops retreated, it was clear from their wide-eyed grimaces and frowns that they were worried, disconcerted, flabbergasted, flummoxed above all. I won’t pretend to know their thoughts, so I’ll just ask: do you think the outcome would’ve been the same if they had been face-to-face with black and brown bodies? It was exhilarating to see the tactic work. It was also a grim reminder of how deeply entrenched white supremacy remains within our institutions and the minds of the people who carry out its functions. This small, discrete victory stood on the chasm between how different shades of people are seen and treated: some with deference and respect, others with a disgust and disdain that makes them disposable.
It is not an uncomplicated matter. Discussing this incident on Facebook, in the days since it occurred, legitimate questions were raised about whether it constitutes white martyrdom. The trope is pervasive in Western culture–a white hero swoops in to save “primitive” darker-skinned people–from Lawrence of Arabia to Avatar. It has served as a justification for colonialism, and in the world of progressive politics today, it often takes the form of white politicians, organizations and activists swooping into black and brown communities to fix them, as if black and brown people didn’t have the intelligence or self-possession to take care of themselves. (Despite the fact that many of America’s most cherished rights and freedoms were won by its black and brown residents, including the Civil Rights Movement). In protest situations, white martyrdom can threaten the safety of the whole crowd, drawing police reprisals that are likely to rain down with harsher fury on darker-skinned protesters. But what separates a martyr from an ally lies in who calls the shots, who does the grunt work, who gets the glory on Instagram and the evening news, and who decides, in the aftermath, how the story of the uprising–countless incidents and moments stitched into a fine tapestry–is told.
Black calls for a barrier of white bodies had been made to protect against police violence, and not only in 2018. In a moment of chaos, an hour or two before the white barrier formed, when people were running in every direction to avoid pepper spray and advancing cops, I heard a similar call from within the crowd. And moments after the barrier coalesced, a young, black woman also reiterated, with the full force of her lungs: “If you’re white, get up to the front.” Since that day, cops around the nation have only grown more unhinged, and I fear that the worst of police viciousness is still to come. Recognizing that black protesters will almost certainly receive their most savage outbursts of fury, tactics that address our lopsided reality can, with thoughtful use that takes cues from black leaders and the degree of police violence bearing down on the crowd, protect the safety of the people.
By the time I left that day, protesters of all races were arrested and left to wash pepper spray from their eyes. No one should feel that they have to “put your bodies upon the gears”–every individual has different risk factors that only they can weigh, and there are many ways for people to support the work of black movements and communities besides direct action. But what I saw in that moment was that a movement is more effective when allies have already taken the time to understand the access and advantages they hold, and then are ready to put them to service when the need and opportunity arises.
Audrea Lim is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, Harper’s and The Nation, and was formerly an editor at Verso.