Month: May 2023

A Problem of the Transition to Socialism: The Relation between Less Developed and More Developed Capitalist Countries

John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, recently posted the following:

There are general considerations that come into play when we consider how a socialist society would develop. Obviously, no detailed blueprint can be drawn up ahead of time but there are obvious questions that would have to be addressed. One of the big ones is how we would actually deal with the vast global inequalities and exploitative arrangements that the imperialist system has put in place. A post I put up yesterday on tourism got me thinking along these lines.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of people in countries like Canada head south in jets and ships to enjoy holidays in poor and oppressed countries. The whole operation reinforces inequality, exploitation and environmental degradation. Yet, workers and communities in these countries are forced to depend on this oppressive arrangement. No serious working class internationalism could exist side by side with this horror.

The question of how we would dismantle this vile set up and what we would replace it with is an example of the complex and challenging period of world wide social transform that lies ahead of us.

Electoral Politics as Subsidiary Tactics, Not the Primary Focus of Social Change

John Clarke, former major organizer fot the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), posted this yesterday on Facebook:

Several people have asked me in the last while whether the points I’ve been making about electoral politics mean that I’m against participating in elections altogether. I’m not suggesting my views on the subject should be held up as exceptionally significant but, since I’ve been asked…

I certainly believe that fundamental change in this society won’t be created by the electoral process. The capitalist class would never accept a vote to dispossess it and the capitalist state couldn’t be used to transform society.

However, the electoral platform can have its uses and some level of elected representation could complement our struggles. Though, in my view, a primary focus on elections is always wrong, participating in them is a tactical question.

I approach this primarily from the standpoint of how our movements should relate to the electoral arena and not the question of whether individuals should cast a ballot or not. On that latter question, however, I do take odds with the notion that there is some duty or inherent benefit connected to voting. In truth, the present electoral system ensures that most people live in ridings that can be considered ‘safe seats.’ Unless you live in a ‘swing riding,’ the chances of impacting the result are negligible. If you want a particular candidate to get as many votes as possible, fair enough, but the present system mainly generates inevitable results.

On the more important question of building movements of social resistance, the great problem is one of subordinating our struggles to electoralism. This often takes the form of demobilizing in order to facilitate the victory of the ‘lesser evil.’ The huge struggles that broke out following the murder of George Floyd in the US were wound down to clear the way for Biden. In Canada, challenges to Trudeau are often disparaged on the grounds that we can’t open the way for you know who. As far as I’m concerned, the strategy of trying to avoid the person with the axe by not challenging the one with the knife is wrong on several levels. Sooner or later, you deal with the axe anyway and you have nothing in place to resist with.

If we had a more powerful working class movement, with strong unions and highly organized communities, we might well find it useful to run candidates that furthered our interests. However, the present model of unaccountable and dubiously progressive parliamentarians who want us to conform to their deal making and pragmatic adaptations is a failed model all round.

For the present, I see little value in any electoral focus. The healthy use of electoral politics will require a much higher level of struggle and a stronger degree of working class organization than presently exists. We need to work on our horse before we worry about the cart.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent? Or Innocent Until Proven Guilty–With Strings (and Money) Attached?

John Clarke, former major organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, twittered the following:

Class based and racist to its core, the #bail system warehouses those supposedly innocent until proven guilty. Even when conditions of release are granted, they’re often petty and needless restrictions. The effort to make this worse is quite appalling.

https://www.readthemaple.com/tightened-bail-restrictions-unlikely-to-curb-violent-crime-experts-warn/?ref=maple-digest-news-newsletter

Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Twenty: The School as the Embodiment of Character Formation Versus the School as the Embodiment of the Three R’s

This is a continuation of a series of posts on summaries of articles, mainly on education.

When I was a French teacher at Ashern Central School, in Ashern, Manitoba, Canada, I started to place critiques, mainly (although not entirely) of the current school system. At first, I merely printed off the articles, but then I started to provide a summary of the article along with the article. I placed the summaries along with the articles in a binder (and, eventually, binders), and I placed the binder in the staff lounge.

As chair of the Equity and Justice Committee for Lakeshore Teachers’ Association of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS), I also sent the articles and summary to the Ning of the MTS (a ning is “an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks”).

As I pointed out in a previous post, it is necessary for the radical left to use every opportunity to question the legitimacy of existing institutions.

The following post refers to John Dewey; Dewey was one of the major philosophers of education of the twentieth century.

The attached article for the ESJ Ning is prefaced by the following:
Hello everyone,
I sent the attached article to the ESJ Ning. I prefaced it with the following:

Ian Westbury, in his article “ `The Educational Situation as Concerns the Elementary School’: Implications for our Time,” uses Dewey’s own title from an article that Dewey wrote in order to point out that we face the same problems that Dewey faces today. Rational curriculum and other educational reforms, he argues, will not be a result of mere theorizing about the problems.

Dewey argued that we need to address not only the theoretical and practical issues of what constitutes education and how that concept of education is to play itself out in curriculum, in pedagogy and in teacher-student interactions. We need to address, on a practical level, the inertia of the present school structure and the inertia of communities who define education in the old way: the three Rs (and, later, when high schools arose, the teaching of separate disciplines, such as science, mathematics and social studies without a mechanism that leads to their integration).

Dewey pointed out that theoreticians could repeat until they were blue in the face about ideal educational conditions and how schools do not embody such ideal conditions—and school bureaucrats would ignore such criticisms. Theory and practice stood at loggerheads, but practice actually won since practice was the site of schools—not universities (except, of course, as school sites themselves—but that is another story).

The problem for Dewey was defined in terms of the inadequate understanding of how schools needed to be organized in order to perform their educational function. The public and the school bureaucracy considered that the essential nature of education was embodied in the traditional three Rs (and, it can be added, the separate disciplines, such as mathematics, science and social studies). [Dewey, however, was quite naïve in considering that conservative forces did not contribute to the inertia of the organization or structure of schools.]

Many educators agree theoretically that character formation should take priority in education, that the concrete should be the point of departure for an understanding of the abstract rather than vice versa, and the real take priority over the symbolic. On the practical level, on the other hand, character formation was left to the “hidden curriculum,” the abstract took precedence over the concrete and the symbolic dominated the real.

To be sure, new studies were added to the curriculum, such as music and drawing, but they were add-ons rather than integrated into the traditional studies. Simply adding such activities to the traditional curriculum of the three Rs led to no rational relation of such add-ons to what was considered to be “real education.” The original organization of the school centered on symbolic learning (the three Rs). The inclusion of later studies was merely grafted on to this structure as frills, with the centre of school organization still being the three Rs (and later, the separate disciplines with no integrative mechanism).

The conflict between the old and the new studies, Dewey argued though, is not inherent to the studies themselves. Both old and new studies should be capable of integration in the form of a new curriculum structure, but the old school organization, based on the old three Rs model (and, later, the separate, unintegrated disciplines), the graded school, the graded curriculum with the division of curriculum according to grade and subject prevented the creation of a rational, integrated curriculum. The old school structure was what the public itself defined as education. Deviations from that model were considered to be non-educative.

There was a major problem, then, for educational reform: to gain legitimacy, educational reform would have to conform to the organization embodied in school institutions, but those institutions were organized according to rigid or fixed model of the three Rs (and the separate, unintegrated disciplines). Reforms that contradicted that school organization may be added to the curriculum, but more as add-ons or frills rather than as integrated components. The “real” curriculum was still considered the three Rs (and the separate, unintegrated disciplines).

As a consequence, teachers had their role already defined by the school organization—as executors of a given fixed curriculum structure.

To overcome this situation, it would be necessary to engage in educational practice rather than in continuing to focus exclusively on theory. New experiments in school organization would be required in order to test new theories and to provide evidence of the advantages of different organizational forms of schools. It would be through such experiments at the local level that large-scale change would emerge—and not through continued developments in theory alone. The public would have to be convinced by practice and not just by more theory development.

Westbury notes that Dewey’s call for the reform of school institutions through, initially, small-scale experiments in different forms of school organization has not been realized in the twenty-first century. Indeed, what Dewey warned of—the development of theory without any corresponding development of experimental embodiment of such theory in different forms of school organization—has been repeated in relation to Dewey’s own theory and practice. University professors may be well-versed in Dewey’s theory and practice, but they have remained aloof from attempting to realize in practice his theory (unlike Dewey, who did try to realize his educational philosophy in the University Laboratory School in Chicago between 1896 and 1904). Teaching practices still operate in what is largely the same organization of the school and the same curriculum structure, and the public’s image of what education involves is still tied to that old, fossilized school organization.

Curriculum theory, rather than just being a theoretical exercise, needs to become a practical endeavour of experimentation as the organizational level of the school as well as a mobilization effort of the public to support such innovations in school organizations.

Westbury, however, denigrates a vision of what real education involves. Although theory without practice undoubtedly spins around itself, practice without theory will be blind.

Another limitation of Westbury’s article is his unrealistic evaluation of the difficulty in overcoming the inertia of school organization. The dogma of school bureaucrats will not be overcome by setting exemplars of experimental schools; Dewey’s own exemplar at the University Laboratory School has all but been forgotten.

What is needed to overcome the inertia of the deadening school organization is a struggle on multiple fronts, both inside and outside schools. That will also require a struggle to overcome wider social organizations and structures that weigh on people, such as the hierarchy at work both for private and public employers.

The creation of a school organization that children and adolescents deserve will not arise without such a struggle. Equity and social justice demands such a struggle—objectively.

 

The Ideology of Meritocracy, the Poor and Prison

John Clarke, former major organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, had this to say rcently about meritocarcy, poverty and prison:

I’ve noted before that during the times I spent in jail it always struck me very strongly that the great bulk of the prisoners wouldn’t have been in there and certainly wouldn’t have had to stay there had they not been poor.

In terms of success and failure in this society, it’s also worth looking at the question from the other side of the class divide. If we take some obvious examples of those who have enjoyed the great advantages offered by wealth and the openings and connections that come with it, things immediately click into place.

Let’s take Justin Trudeau, Doug Ford, Elon Musk and King Charles. Imagine them being born into average income working class families and ask yourself whether they possess exceptional talents and qualities that would bring them fame and fortune. It seems fairly obvious that they are all living and breathing refutations of the notion of meritocracy.

The Reality of Police Action: The Use of Force Against a 95-year Old Woman

I read an article on Saturday, May 20, in the Toronto Star newspaper. I mentioned this to my wife, who was shocked and began to cry (her mother is 85). John Clarke, former major organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, commented on this article recently, and added a link to the Guardian’s account.

John Clarke

Obviously, there can be no credible suggestion that this elderly woman posed a serious danger to the cop. She may have been holding knife, as she approached, using a walking frame, but it was completely possible for the cop to keep out of harm’s way. The use of the taser can’t be justified in terms of self-defence but it is really quite easy to understand if you have any familiarity with how police function.

Day to day policing is focused on social control and the assertion of authority is central to this. This means that cops demand compliance and, if they don’t obtain it, physically enforce it. The selection process, training and day to day functioning of the police establishes and reinforces this basic pattern of behaviour.

This is why the police are so horribly lethal in situations of emotional crisis and it explains the monstrous irrationality of firing an electric current into the body of a frail 95 year old woman. Talk of sensitivity training and deescalation skills is all just so much fluff that is at odds with the basic enforcement role of the police. When their instructions aren’t complied with, they move to the next level and, if the object of their attentions is too distraught or too disorientated to fall into line, the results are always harsh and often tragic.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/19/homicide-squad-officers-to-investigate-senior-constables-tasering-of-95-year-old-aged-care-resident?fbclid=IwAR0VSMjHIVlTbSzyhfTB3YF0OLhA08I5Gxw8ZD47xi6ECG2Bpi3RwpowD7w

What Are Some Organizational Models (and Sources) of Class and Community Struggle?

John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), recently requested information about different models of class (and, presumably, community) struggle. Apart from the Leninist democratic centralist model, what are some other models? Sources?

John Clarke

This is one of my appeals for ideas and sources. We are clearly living at a time when the class struggle is becoming very much more decisive and sharp. Mass social resistance that takes forms that go beyond the present levels of relative class compromise are needed, if we are to mount even defensive struggles that can prevail.

In this situation, organization forms that can take forward that resistance and provide a means of sustaining it, are of great importance. Midnight Sun just included an article on how various forms of struggle are being united and developed in Nigeria. The example of the resistance committees in Sudan is a powerful one. I want to try and gather up organizational models emerging today or that existed in the past and write something that can be usefully applied in the present context.

This is a period that can produce sudden explosive upsurges but there is a great need for rank and file union and community based initiatives that can ensure such moments aren’t diverted and contained. Obviously, preconceived models can’t just be imposed at will but, on the other hand, relevant approaches that are being taken can be enormously helpful, as people move into struggle.

I’d welcome any help with good examples of what I’m talking about. Leave a comment or send me a message. We’re not quite ready for All Power to the Soviets but there is a huge role for dynamic and participatory organizational forms that can advance our struggles.

Class Harmony and Social Reformism: The United Way as a Reformist Organization, Part Two

This is the continuation of a previous post. In the first post, I looked critically at the web site of the United Way Centraide Canada. The following post looks critically at one of its branch publications, Rebalancing the Opportunity Equation (May, 2019), by United Way Greater Toronto.

The publication contains many implicit statements that illustrate its own view that employees and employers can, somehow, live in harmony. Such a view of class harmony, of course, has been persistently criticized on this blog from the start, when I created the page The Money Circuit of Capital.

The limitations of the publication–and hence the United Way–can be seen implicitly even in the Foreword. It says (page 5):

With the data available to us, this report begins with a look at how inequality is impacting certain groups.

The publication–typical of social-reformist or social-democratic publications–measures inequality and poverty in terms of level of income. Since I have already criticized this way of analyzing poverty, inequality and class (see School Rhetoric: Ideological Use of the Concept of Social Justice, Part One), I refer the reader to that post; its analysis applies equally to the limited implicit definition of poverty by the United Way.

The rhetoric of class harmony can be seen in the following (page 6):

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is a great place to live. It is one of the most diverse regions in the world, where we are held together by a collective identity that is fueled by a shared commitment and interest in one another despite our differences. This shared commitment is built on the trust and reciprocity that exists between community members and is an important reason the GTA is such a desirable place for people to live, raise their families, and grow their businesses.

But there are growing forces undermining that shared commitment to each other: the GTA labour market is increasingly characterized by precarious work; there is a lack of affordable places for people to live; and people continue to face systemic discrimination in the economy and everyday life.

The first paragraph merely asserts–without any proof or evidence–that there is such a thing as a “collective identity”–as if living in an area called Greater Toronto Area automatically creates a collective identity. This is pure rhetoric that hides the reality of class exploitation by some of the very donors to the United Way (see my previous post as well as the post A Short List of the Largest Employers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

What is the “shared commitment and interest” of employees of the Royal Bank of Canada and their employer? A real sharing involves relatively equal participation in both the decisions of an organization and the consequences of that organization (and organizations connected to it). Do the employees who work for the Royal Bank of Canada (or any of the largest corporations in Toronto) share relatively equally in participatory power with upper management and the Board of Directors of the Royal Bank of Canada? Of course not.

This “shared commitment and interest to each other,” although containing some truth (employees in the Royal Bank of Canada obviously need their job if they are to live, to enjoy and to fulfill some aspects of their lives–as long as employers exist), is riveted with its opposite–a shared antagonism of commitments and interests since it is also not in the interests of such employees to be used as things or means for the benefit of the Royal Bank of Canada and other corporations obtaining as much money as possible.

On page 7, we read:

Fairness and opportunity are core values that bind us together; they are at the heart of the community we all love and feel proud of. The promise of the opportunity equation must be available to everyone for this to remain true. Otherwise, divisions will grow and the GTA of the future will be a less desirable place to live, raise a family, or grow a business. This report helps us to better understand where to focus our resources to make the promise of the opportunity equation a reality for everyone.

Since working for an employer is necessarily unfair (see The Money Circuit of Capital), the United Way would have had to propose that we move forward by developing a movement that is dedicated to the elimination of the power of the class of employers and the economic, political and social structures that support that power. Of course, it would be very difficult to do so since part of the funding for the United Way comes from the very corporations whose interests are opposed to the creation of social relations that can be characterized by fairness.

The 152 page publication then goes on to show how inequality in income has increased–in many cases substantially–based on age, immigration status (born in Canada or not born here), race and gender.

The increase in income gaps along these diverse lines should not be ignored, of course. However, the publication completely ignores the impact of the economic structure on whether various categories can actually gain control over their lives–the real test of fairness. Consider the category of race. The data provided in the publication shows that (page 63):

Racialized groups experienced income gains from 2005 to 2015, after ten years of little movement. However, within each employment type, the income gap between racialized and white groups grew in Canada, Peel, Toronto, and York. This divide was more pronounced for those engaged in permanent, full-time employment, where the average incomes of  white groups in permanent, full-time jobs increased at a faster rate than the incomes of racialized groups. By 2015, the average income of white groups in permanent, full-time employment was 1.3 times greater than that of racialized groups in the same form of employment in Peel and York and 1.7 times greater in Toronto.

Employment relations may well be racialized (I have not researched the issue). Reducing income gaps between permanent (or even part-time) white employees and permanent racialized groups is certainly necessary (not by reducing the incomes of white employees but by raising the incomes of racialized employees), but such struggle, if successful, will eat into the profits of some of the funders of United Way. The United Way makes no mention of this–due to its class-harmony approach of referring to “collective identity” and “shared commitment and interest.”

Indeed, none of the solutions proposed by the United Way to the problems of growing income gaps based on various differences refer to the problem of the power of employers as a class. They offer three general recommendations (page 77):

  1. ensuring everyone can participate in society
  2. enabling people to get ahead
  3. making life more affordable.

1. Ensuring Everyone Can Participate in Society

The first recommendation excludes democratic participation in companies, such as the Royal Bank of Canada, Air Canada, Canadian Natural Resources and so forth. What it does include is three sub-recommendations (page 77):

1. Undertake a national dialogue on social cohesion.
2. Develop and coordinate data-informed social cohesion strategies.
3. Support funding and innovation in the community services sector.

On page 78, the United Way then states:

When people are not connected to each other, everyone suffers the consequences. It wears on the foundations of our communities.

This is surely false. The foundations of an economy based on the power of the class of employers is precisely the initial lack of connection of people to each other. Brewery workers are not connected to other workers as workers directly but via the production of the things which they produce as social things with powers that are expressed in money. The initial disconnection of workers from each other, furthermore, then needs an external connection, represented by employers, who own what they produce disconnectedly (Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital, pages 71-72):

Betwixt him who produces food and him who produces clothing, betwixt him who makes instruments and him who uses them, in steps the capitalist, who neither makes nor uses them, and appropriates to himself the produce of both. With as niggard a hand as possible he transfers to each a part of the produce of the other, keeping to himself the large share. Gradually and successively has he insinuated himself betwixt them, expanding in bulk as he has been nourished by their increasingly productive labours, and separating them so widely from each other that neither can see whence that supply is drawn which each receives through the capitalist. While he despoils both, so completely does he exclude one from the view of the other that both believe they are indebted him for subsistence. He is the middleman of all labourers.

Connection must then occur, not through the voluntary will of workers, but through the force of the class of employers and through the force of the market. In other words, disconnection and connection are necessarily linked to each other. The United Way papers over the essential nature of the kind of society in which we live, which is characterized by the power of a class of employers. It offers platitudes about “connections between people” without ever asking what kinds of disconnections are indeed beneficial for employers and what kinds of connections are harmful to them (workers organizing themselves for the purpose of abolishing the power of employers). The world of the United Way cannot even deal with the basic fact of capitalist society–that disconnection and separation are necessary characteristics of this kind of society. It then claims that such disconnection is not beneficial to anyone–which is patently false.

Furthermore, how could competition between employers ever arise if there were no such thing as disconnection? Competition assumes both connection and disconnection. Different employers in the same industry are disconnected from each other and from consumers; however, the different employers compete on the market (and are thus connected).

The rhetoric of class harmony can be found repeatedly (page 79):

Ultimately, unless we address the discriminatory attitudes, like racism and xenophobia, that underlie the opportunity equation, the income and social inequality trends identified in this report will not improve. If anything, they will continue on their trajectory and get worse. We need to revisit our social foundations and lay out a new plan for who we want to be in the future. Building connected communities means emphasizing our civic likeness and the things that hold us together—common understanding, acceptance, inclusion, and active reliance on each other. Together, we can (re)define what it means to be Canadian in this increasingly polarized world.

It goes without saying that any “common understanding” must arise under the watchful eyes of the class of employers and their representatives. It is an illusion to refer to a community interest within the context of the power of a class of employers.

2. Enabling People to Get Ahead

The second general recommendation has much to do with making the “labour market” function more smoothly, enabling young people, immigrants, non-whites and women to be employed in better-paying and more secure jobs. Of course, better paying and more secure jobs is undoubtedly better than jobs that pay less and that are more insecure. However, that is the limit of this recommendation (page 83):

Even with the right mix of education and training, there is no guarantee of a good job as too few training programs are linked from the outset to employers’ needs.

I have on many occasions criticized the rhetoric of “good jobs” or “decent work.” The United Way does not question the existence of a market for workers in the first place; it proposes, rather, a better matching skills, education and credentials to jobs. By not questioning the market for workers in the first place, the United Way implicitly agrees with the existence of the power of employers over the class of employees.

The United Way also feeds into the ideology of the middle-class, about which I wrote in another post (see School Rhetoric: Ideological Use of the Concept of Social Justice, Part One) (page 86):

Stable, secure jobs were more common in the past than they are in today’s labour market. In the past, these kinds of jobs allowed many people to achieve a stable and secure lifestyle and to join the middle class. Today, these jobs make up a smaller proportion of the overall labour market, as precarious employment has become entrenched in the Toronto region.

The United Way, at best, opposes neoliberalism but not capitalism–like social reformists and social democrats of various stripes.

Furthermore, I have already criticized  one of the proposals in this general recommendation before (see What’s Left, Toronto? Part Five), namely Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs). The United Way has this to say about CBAs (page 84):

CBAs in the GTA, such as those used in the Eglinton Crosstown LRT construction and
the Hurontario Light Rail Transit project, have leveraged public infrastructure projects to offer training and employment opportunities to local people who are experiencing multiple barriers to the labour market, like youth and newcomers. Through these CBAs, workers from local communities have developed relevant and marketable skills and have gained access to jobs that pay decent wages and provide career pathways to other opportunities.

CBAs may help a minority obtain better paying and more secure jobs, but it is a minor tool that has little power to change the systemic biases of the labour market.

3. Making Life More Affordable

This general recommendation considers such problems as the affordability of housing, transport and child care. In all three cases, there is a mismatch of supply and demand, with demand outstripping supply or supply being inadequate to demand. The need is then to balance supply and demand (pages 90-91):

we focus on three social anchors—affordable housing, public transportation, and child care—because these areas are reaching a crisis point and require urgent attention in the GTA. Improvements to the accessibility of these social anchors will benefit the entire region but will disproportionately impact those groups whose incomes have stagnated—young adults, immigrants, racialized groups, and women—and create the conditions for these groups to take advantage of the opportunities presented in the preceding recommendations.

The balancing of supply and demand in these areas would probably increase the standard of living of the four targeted groups and is certainly, like other recommendations, not to be opposed just because they are reformist. Reformism, however, that limits itself to reformist measures only and assumes that this is the only game in town–as does the United Way–needs to be thoroughly criticized.

There are also a problem with this approach in relation to housing that United Way does not mention. As I argued in another post (What’s Left, Toronto? Part Three), some workers who own condominiums, duplexes, townhouses or detached houses may benefit from the mismatch between the supply and demand of housing as the price of their major asset increases. The United Way does not mention this problem at all.

Conclusion

The United Way limits its recommendations to proposals that would humanize capitalism–to make capitalism more tolerable. This is its real goal. Its whole approach assumes the legitimacy of capitalism as such.

In Toronto, I have not seen any criticisms of the United Way. Is this not a reflection of the impotence of the left? Should we not question its social-reformist or social-democratic assumptions?

Or should we accept (tolerate) such social reformism in the name of the need for compromise?

Police and the Poorer Sections of the Working Class

John Clarke, former major organizer of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), recently wrote on Facebook:

I hate seeing cops persecute those they have targeted based on racism or the selection of the visibly poor. It’s difficult to play a useful role in these situations. I have had a couple of bad experiences where my efforts to provide support have backfired and the person under threat clearly wanted to try and resolve things without any help.

The reality of policing is that there are whole populations of people who don’t live in a society where basic rights and freedoms exist. They can be detained and interrogated at will by the police and they know that civil liberties don’t apply to them in practice.

The policing of the poor (polite liberal fictions aside) is one of the sharpest manifestations of class rule and an accurate understanding of the roots and nature of the police function will be shocking to those who live in the just and rational society of the future.