The Police and Racism in France (and Undoutedly Elsewhere), Part One: Tactics

John Clarke, former organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), recently posted the following on Facebook:

John Clarke

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If a riot is the language of the unheard what do we make of the words that are ringing out on the streets in France at the moment?

To the racist cops immediately responsible for this explosion, a riot is defiance that they will crush until their dull witted authoritarianism bites off more than it can chew and they reap what they have sown.

To those in power, it is a source of fear that leads them to combine their repressive response with expressions of concern and empty promises of change.

What does the sound mean for working class movements and the left? What it should be heard as is a challenge over effectiveness and relevance. If we are to tell those rising up in anger that there are ‘better ways to do things,’ whnat are those ways? Are they to elect political representatives who will promise much but vacillate and retreat when put to the test? Are they to build actions and campaigns that reveal potential working class strength but fail to unleash it decisively?

It may be true that outbursts of rage can be contained and that winning strategies are needed but, for these to work, they have to be set in motion. In this regard, two things are needed. Firstly, we must build a united and truly representative movement of social resistance that confronts the racism and state violence that has created the French uprising. By this I mean placing these issues at the centre of the struggle. It won’t do to mention them as an afterthought or include them in a shopping list of vague demands.

The decisive question, however, is to challenge the whole agenda of exploitation, inequality and exclusion by discarding forms of struggle that seek an impossible compromise and to take up the kind of social resistance that the present situation demands.

In place of the one off rally or the day of action, we need to build unlimited strikes around key demands and powerfully disruptive movements that take to the streets and stay on them until those demands are won.

If we can do that, the rage and refusal to submit that we see in France at the moment will be the driving force of a movement of mass social action that refuses to accept the solutions those in power wish to impose on us and that fights for society in which the injustices we must challenge today are ugly memories of the past.