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On the road to May Day: A non-report-back from Denver 2017

2017-05-11T19:09:59Z

Figure 1. “Diogenes Asking for Alms” by Jean-Bernard Restout (1767). Here Diogenes is begging from a statue, which he did to practice being rejected.

A spectrum of beggars

Being asked why people give to beggars but not to philosophers, Diogenes said, “Because they think they may one day be lame or blind, but never expect that they will turn to philosophy.”

Every other day of the year I’m dismissive toward churches, parties, unions, and holy days; but on May 1st, I’m somehow always hopeful that a large number of radicals will turn out and cause trouble. It’s been a few years since I’ve written a post complaining about the tameness of May Day in Denver. That’s because I realized that I’m too shy to contribute to or get much out of protests and stopped attending them. This year, however, with good weather, the drama around Trump, and the centennial of the 1917 revolutions, I thought the demonstrations could be big. I searched online and saw that the Democratic Socialists of America and some other groups planned a “May Day Against Trumpism” at the capitol building. Wanting to not miss out, I took the bus to the city.

Between Union Station and Denver’s capitol building is a mile of pedestrian shopping called 16th Street Mall. Recounting one’s walk down 16th Street Mall is often to sketch a continuum-forming typology of beggars:

Figure 2. A print-quality diagram depicting the perfectly sensible multi-dimensional typology of begging. I’m not at all embarrassed of the concept or drawing. The bus icon is by Naomi Atkinson; the capitol icon is by Loren Klein (CC-BY-3.0). The lines were drawn by me: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Click image for SVG version.

Almost as soon as I stepped outside of the bus station a woman approached me and asked if I had “a dollar or something to help with food.” I remembered that I had grabbed some extra change with my bus fare and handed her the two dimes. She cheerfully assured me that every little bit helps. This is the unpretentious beggar: she offers nothing in exchange for taking money except to live and beg another day. Every other beggar I’d meet on my way to the capitol would present their case as an exchange; they’d tell me that either I or an even more helpless third party somewhere would benefit from my donation.

A girl with a clipboard standing at the nearby intersection who witnessed my twenty-cent donation caught my eyes and asked, “Do you want to save a child with me today?” From what I gathered before the crossing light changed, the plan was for her to get paid to solicit donations for some sponsor-a-child charity scheme and for me to give her my money. I couldn’t even think of a sensible response to that offer of teamwork and just awkwardly shook my head before crossing the street. Later down the mall I met some more clipboard beggars, and I did much better. One girl got my attention with a friendly greeting and then explained that with Trump in office it is very important that I give to the ACLU. I told her I didn’t have any money. She was understanding and told me that I could donate online whenever I do have money.

A man begging on behalf of Save The Children, an organization currently helping victims of the Syrian civil war, asked if he could talk to me about their work. I told him I don’t have any money, and he politely asked if he could give me his spiel anyway. So I listened. When he got back to asking for a donation I wished him luck and walked on. It turns out that while he’s trying to extract money from unemployed anarchists on the mall, the President and CEO of Save the Children, Carolyn Miles (whose background is in marketing, specifically in selling American Express cards to college students), is paid $455,000 per year.

Further down the mall I looked down and walked fast to avoid interacting with a pair of clipboard-holders wearing Greenpeace shirts.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. When I crossed to the other side of 16th Street, on the first block of the mall, there was a man playing the flute along to some kind of electronic jazz music playing from a loudspeaker while also talking to passers-by trying to get them to dance. It was a tough crowd, but he was a skilled performer and there were several dollars in the wooden box on the ground in front of him.

Unlike most beggars, buskers are generally not only tolerated but desired by downtown business improvement districts because they provide some cultural authenticity which makes shopping a less sterile experience. People often give to buskers because they genuinely enjoyed the performance rather than out of pity, in which cases street performing is a commercial art rather than begging proper. While I’ve not witnessed them in Denver, other cases in which unsolicited services are pre-rendered with the expectation of payment, such as squeegee beggars who clean windshields at stoplights for donations, probably rarely make that transition (and so precede busking in the spectrum).

The claim that donations are actually payment for a service is a rhetorical game Diogenes played when he said people should pay him “not for alms, but for repayment of his due” (presumably for being such a great philosopher). And like some guilt-tripping clipboard beggars, he also tried leaning on potential donors' sense of fairness and morality to reason them into giving to him: “If you have already given to anyone else, give to me also; if not, begin with me.”

Jesus, the founder of the other ancient tradition of begging which has been gnawing the foundations of Western civilization for over 2,000 years, also gave some rather cynical advice on how to handle beggars. Included in his Sermon on the Mount are three of his most characteristic pronouncements. The first, “Do not resist an evildoer,” is followed by three examples of enduring more abuse than one’s day-to-day abusers expect (if someone slaps your face, turn turn the other cheek; if someone sues you for the literal shirt off your back, give them your cloak too; if you are conscripted to walk a mile, walk two miles). The third is “Love your enemies,” after which Jesus points out that even tax collectors — the very agents of exploitation — are nice to their friends, so that should be, like, the absolute minimum standard of behavior.

Perhaps less famous (though not less vexing) than those two paradoxical sayings is found right between them: “Give to everyone who begs from you.”

Jesus’s first followers were propertyless peasants who had left even their homes, were used to putting up with abuse at the hands of their social betters, to going without sufficient clothing, to walking more than even soldiers, were more often beggars than givers, and who nevertheless treated everybody well. Whatever the deeper and more general applications of these sayings, then, on their surface they not only presented the lifestyle of the early Christians (that which potential followers would be expected to adopt), they also seem to be lightheartedly self-serving in the same style of the Cynics who taught that it was virtuous to give to homeless philosophers.

The co-optation of Christianity by the rich and powerful not long after Jesus was executed imbued these sayings with even greater difficulty for their future audiences, especially “give to everyone who begs from you” which cannot be so easily philosophized away as a paradox. As an example, consider the case of a 19th-century Russian aristocrat named Leo Tolstoy who after a legendary career as a novelist attempted to take the sayings of Jesus seriously. His struggles with “do not resist an evildoer” produced several works which had profound influences on social justice movements around the world and are still read by pacifists and anarchists today. But it wasn’t until he was quite old that he finally got the courage (if sneaking away from one’s wife in the middle of the night counts as courageous) to leave all of his possessions by setting out on train with nothing but the clothes of a standard Russian peasant. He developed pneumonia and died within days of leaving home.

The pretensions of the cynical beggar are ironic in that the audience is aware of the rhetorical game, but like in the case of the street performer, it is the decision of those who give as to whether they are giving out of pity or gratitude. Beyond that, the type of beggar represented by the Cynic and the Christian are honest both in the sense that they present neither sob stories nor pretended friendliness, but even more so in that they invite their listeners to throw off their own pretensions about the society they are living in and reproducing. That is, to the Cynic and the Christian, giving to beggars is not in tension with more systematic solutions to poverty, it is the systematic solution to poverty. The clipboard-holding fundraiser, in contrast, who has perfected the sob story, the salesman-like friendliness, and who claims salvation is found in non-profit organizations, is perhaps the paragon of the dishonest beggar.

I didn’t have occasion to mention it, because I have thankfully never been a witness or victim to a robbery (not that such crimes are unknown on the 16th Street Mall), but robbers also make no claim to be helping their victims and should logically precede the unpretentious beggar in our spectrum. While of course theft and robbery, being characterized by their involuntary demands, are not begging properly, even muggers sometimes couch their activity in the language of a market exchange (‘your money for your life’).

Julian, the fourth-century Roman emperor (a nephew of Constantine) who tried to peacefully revert the empire from Christianity back to Paganism, was annoyed with the openly atheist and crude Cynics of his day. He wanted all Cynics to be as pious and educated as he imagined Diogenes and Crates were, and argued that most Cynics were even worse than bandits and pirates who were at least decent enough to be ashamed of their lifestyle and live in their faraway hideouts instead of preaching at people in the streets. He also referred to Cynics as “monks,” intending the association with Christians to be an insult (Christians were only one or three gods away from being atheists themselves).

At many of the intersections along the mall I saw newspaper salesmen — often older men with all of their possessions in bags on the ground at their feet — selling the Denver VOICE for a suggested $2 per copy. Originally founded 20 years ago as “a grassroots newspaper created by homeless people for homeless people,” the VOICE is now written for a general audience and sold by homeless vendors (who buy the papers for $0.50 each) as a way for them to earn some income. (The Denver VOICE is independent, but its operating model is influenced by similar street newspaper vending networks which operate in cities around the world.)

These charity vendors, whose sales depend at least as much on pity as on satisfying the wants of their customers, are located in the middle of the murky space where begging becomes selling (somewhere to the retail side of the children in third-world cities who sell trinkets to Western tourists).

Of course the entire mall is lined by actual retail shops and beggardly advertisements. Salespersons and advertisers (and the business owners they work for) likely imagine they are much further along the spectrum of begging than they actually are.

Downtown business associations and city councils will often commission artwork to help beautify shopping areas and, as in the case of buskers, will happily tolerate some guerrilla murals which provide a degree of authenticity to the shopping environment. But for the most part any art or graphic design which might distract from the commercial purposes of the property is forbidden. In the words of the street artist Banksy, “The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl their giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you’re never allowed to answer back.”

Banksy’s observation echoes one by GK Chesterton a hundred years earlier that “It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money”:

A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.

Shop and restaurant owners on the 16th Street Mall have been known to be hostile to the more needy beggars operating on their turf and have enlisted the police to carry out revanchist actions against the most vulnerable. In 2012, legislation criminalizing the act of sleeping outside with shelter (defined as “any tent, tarpaulin, lean-to, sleeping bag, bedroll, blankets, or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing”) was passed on behalf of downtown business owners. Under the authority of that code, police have conducted winter raids on homeless camps to confiscate blankets. Recently three individuals accused of camping with shelter were tried by jury, convicted, and sentenced to several days of forced labour.

The City of Denver in collaboration with downtown business owners has installed mechanical panhandlers — modified parking meters — which are meant to compete with live beggars. The city has promised the money collected by the machines will go toward “job training, meals and permanent housing options that help get people back on their feet,” but it has been caught spending it instead to help fund the police sweeps of homeless camps.

The mall ends where 16th Street dead-ends into Broadway. To the north is the financial heart of Denver’s business center. On 16th Street itself are the two Denver World Trade Center buildings and Republic Plaza (the tallest building in Denver); scattered beyond those are more high-rise office buildings and skyscrapers. These buildings exhibit almost none of the colorful and chaotic elements of the shopping mall and are instead dark, sleek, and inauspicious.

The craft of capital allocation and investment, which is practiced in many of these buildings, does not depend on demanding, begging, or offering so much as on staking ownership and simply taking interest. Like the robber on one end of our spectrum, we have financial capitalism on the other: the bandit subsumed. The full spectrum of begging plays out between these dialectical bookends of the modern capitalist economy, as it does everyday between Union Station and Broadway.

Walking a block south on Broadway brought me to the state capitol building. I could see maybe 100 demonstrators nestled up on the steps waving red and black flags. A large banner facing the street read “No War But Class War,” and another further back read “Workers & Oppressed People of the World Unite!” There were no police or pro-Trump counter-protestors in sight.

The prospect of joining them seemed both socially overwhelming and boring. Like some sort of party. So I continued walking down Broadway and spent my afternoon in the Denver Public Library. It was a good May Day.

Other people’s May Day 2017

Of course, some people actually followed through on their plans to attend a May Day demonstration. The local Fox News affiliate was kind enough to both get the word out about various May Day protests in Denver as well as to follow up with a short video and a couple of pictures from the event at the capitol: “May Day events taking place in Denver” (Fox31, 1 May 2017). More photos can be found on the Facebook event page.

A few cities around the world saw major protests, with the riot in Paris getting the most headlines because protesters responded to police tear gas with spectacular petrol bombs. Hundreds of protesters and six cops were injured during the clashes.

In the United States the most unusual thing about May Day this year was the presence of Trump-inspired right-wing counter-protesters who turned up in several cities. Seattle was unusually quiet though there was a minor confrontation with participants of a “Stand Against Communism” rally.

The most rowdy demonstrations were in Portland and Olympia. In Portland a minor riot broke out after a few protesters threw full cans of Pepsi at riot police who responded by charging into the mostly peaceful crowd of marchers. The bloc’d up [mostly-anarchist, no doubt] protesters who instigated the police response have been criticized for endangering the rest of the march.

There was also a small riot in Olympia where protesters threw rocks at police (and some counter-protesters threw rocks at marching demonstrators). In one unfortunate and embarrassing instance, a protester tried to pepper spray some taunting counter-protesters and accidentally sprayed passers-by including a dog. Most cops are not even that irresponsible with chemical weapons.

The Red Guards Austin, a Maoist group which has gained some notoriety in recent months due to their open-carry demonstrations, tried to march in Austin, but they were surround by an alarming number of reactionary counter protesters. Apparently racists and anti-communists of the InfoWars variety are numerous in the Austin area (I didn’t realize until now that Alex Jones lives in Austin and hosts his show there). Some Red Guards members were carrying rifles, and so were a few of the right-wingers. In their public self-criticism which they posted to their weblog, the Red Guards described this scary moment:

Early on in the march a fascist named William Fears physically assaulted one of the comrades who was guiding chants and for this Fears came very close to forcing our units to use lethal force. Those in attendance could see fear in his eyes as the Partisan unit moved into the ready position prepared to chamber a round.

My impression is that the Austin PD did a good job keeping the groups apart and possibly from literally killing each other. The independent journalist Kit O’Connell was present and wrote a good postmortem of the event: “Unpacking The Fascist Rampage On May Day In Austin: What Happened, What Went Wrong.” I could not find a single report from a main stream news outfit.

Sources of quotations

The sayings of Diogenes quoted above can be found in Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VI. Those of Jesus are recorded in Matthew 5:38-48. Julian’s thoughts on Cynics are preserved in his seventh Oration: “To the Cynic Heracleios.” The Banksy quote is from his introduction to Wall and Piece. GK Chesterton’s opinion on advertisements can be found in his 1920 book The New Jerusalem.

Report Back: Denver March in Support of the Baltimore Uprising (4/29)

2015-05-14T22:28:32Z

On the afternoon of May 1st I attended the annual May Day demonstration in Denver. I think it was a larger turnout than last year. But after about a minute I remembered how much I hate things like being in a group of people I don’t (but should) know, standing around “protesting” with signs and slogans, and generally being in a city. So I right away walked back to Union Station and got the next bus home.

As I walked away from the demonstrators the only police I noticed were some officers staged around the corner of the capitol building largely out of sight so as not to incite any conflict. This was in contrast to the method employed by the Denver Police Department (DPD) across the street from the capitol during a protest demonstration I attended only a few days earlier. That protest, on the Wednesday prior to May Day, was a march organized by the Denver Community Defense Committee (and others) in support of the rioters in Baltimore and of the protest movement sparked by the murdered students of Ayotzinapa.

My sister met me downtown and attended the march with me, so it was way more fun than when I try to do protesting by myself. We gathered in front of the detention center and courthouse (where I was once detained, and where I was tried and convicted for my role in the Occupy Denver camp almost exactly three years ago). Many cars honked in support as they drove by. Some organizers with permanent markers moved through the crowd making sure everyone who wanted it had the jail support phone number written on their bodies. A member of the ISO was handing out free copies of the latest Socialist Worker. Free copies. When the Trotskyists are giving away their newspapers you know Full Communism can’t be far off.

From Denver to Baltimore to Ayotzinapa: We Do Mind Dying (photo by Jason Metter)

Once around 100 people had gathered, we moved into eastbound Colfax Ave leaving only one lane open for traffic. Even then we got honks of support from motorists. The police materialized from behind the protesters, moving west up the eastbound side. We turned to face them. I got pressed into service holding one of the banners at the front of the group (via a classic “would you hold this for a second?” move by its previous handler). A line of police on motorcycles drove up to the protest, stopping suddenly only inches from those of us in front so as to prevent us from marching forward down the street. After a brief standoff we moved to the sidewalk and walked past the line of motorcycles.

For the next couple of blocks the police carelessly and intentionally swooped their heavy motorcycles close to marching protesters in an attempt to keep them on the sidewalk. Many other police vehicles carrying officers in crowd-control gear including a DPD SWAT team riding on an SUV had also responded to the gathering. We lost our motorcycle escort briefly at Civic Center Park where Colfax bends away from the sidewalk, so when we turned right onto Broadway we were in the shoulder of the street again.

The motorcycles quickly caught up and resumed trying to herd us off of the street. One sped right up beside me, almost right into me, and shouted to MOVE TO THE SIDEWALK! I was looking forward at that moment and was startled by his maneuver and the only thing I could think to say in response was, “be careful.” He repeated, this time in a quieter tone, his command for me to move to the sidewalk. I replied, “ok, but while we are in the street, be careful with your bike.” At that point we were approaching two big tour buses parked on the shoulder of Broadway; he drove off up ahead to find someone else to yell at while I decided to go around the buses on the sidewalk in order to avoid being squeezed between them and the police. I also took the opportunity to abandon my job as a banner holder. I think the other guy was better off without me anyway.

Just as I passed the second bus, the police attacked. I heard a scuffle in the street on the other side of the buses. I jogged back to see several police arresting a protester wearing a backpack. Luckily, as the police were walking him away he managed to toss his backpack in the street where another protester grabbed it before any of the cops could.

Photo of the arrest. He had already thrown his backpack to safety at this point. The sign in the back reads "Jesus Loves Coffee Not Cops," a reference to the weekly Coffee Not Cops meeting in Denver. (Photo from Occupy Denver’s Facebook page)

While I was watching, one of the green-clad tactical guys armed with one of those large riot revolvers that shoot 40mm cannisters shoved the guy next to me and then pointed his weapon at my chest and told me to get back. I didn’t know if he was loaded with impact rounds or tear gas, but at that range I assumed anything would be ‘more or less lethal’, so I backed up then returned to the sidewalk.

That’s when I realized it was not an isolated arrest. Several people between and beside the buses had been pepper sprayed, some tackled on the pavement, and were being bound while other police in crowd-control gear were pepper spraying onlookers. My sister and I both got only a very light misting which caused a bit of coughing and brief eye burning… but I saw several people take multiple full sprays directly to the face.

Eager cop sprays protesters from behind motorcycles (photo from Occupy Denver’s Facebook page)

Denver police arrest a man while pepper spraying photographers (photo by Jason Metter — see his Facebook album)

Police spraying a small group of people on the sidewalk. The sign on the ground reads "Christians Against Killer Cops" (photo from Occupy Denver’s Facebook page)

The group spent quite a bit of time in Civic Center Park recovering and flushing eyes with water and milk. The police made a few excursions into the park to grab and arrest a few more protesters. I don’t know why some people were targeted, but I’m assuming they were grabbing people they could identify as having been in the street earlier so they could charge them with minor traffic offenses and remove them from the protest (there were forensics officers video recording the entire march).

Once everyone had more-or-less recovered we continued our march to the 16th Street Mall and around downtown Denver before people began dispersing. After the attack on Broadway, my priority for the rest of the march was to make sure neither myself nor my sister got arrested. That meant leaving the group at one point as it headed down an alley-less street toward police where I feared a kettle and possible mass arrest. Fortunately the group was able to turn, and we caught back up to them on the mall a little before everyone dispersed.

In total 11 people were arrested. Most were charged with misdemeanors, but there were also at least two felony assault on police charges. Two protesters that I know of were hospitalized while in custody for the injuries they sustained during their arrests.

Videos

There are several videos of the march available online, especially of the police attacking protesters on Broadway, including some footage posted to Vimeo by Unicorn Riot. The videographer during much of that footage is next to me, so it actually provides something near to my point-of-view during the first bit of the protest.

Unicorn Riot’s video shows much of what I saw

David Long captured video of several of the arrests which I did not witness myself:

Arrests During the Denver-Baltimore Solidarity March (4/29)

Finally, the DAM Collective posted several videos to YouTube, including this one which shows the general mood of both protesters and police before and during the attack:

This video gives the general flavour of the first part of the march

Why Did They Attack?

The attack on Broadway surprised me, and the apparently unprovoked aggression struck me as unusual even by DPD standards. I am not the most experienced street protester (refer to the list of things I hate in the first paragraph), but most unpermitted marches I’ve seen are controlled by police by blocking intersections in order to force the group to halt or turn until everyone gets tired and goes home (or, if the police had time to prepare, until most protesters are kettled and arrested).

But this attack occurred in the middle of a block, after we had been walking for only a few minutes, and when a good portion of the protesters were on the sidewalk. There was a rumor that the attack was precipitated by a protester jumping onto or knocking over a police motorcycle. And after the march the Denver Post reported, quoting a police spokesperson, that the trigger for the attack was when “An officer got knocked of[f] his motorcycle as he was basically patrolling.”

However, on May 1st Jesse Benn posted a clear video to YouTube showing the incident which incited the attack by police. In the video, a police officer on a motorcycle is seen riding very close to a bicyclist who was riding along with protesters. The cyclist can be seen defensively sticking his elbow out as he is crowded by the motorcycle, at which point the officer, who is trying to balance at a very slow speed, manages to drop his bike. In response that officer and the tactical team are seen to immediately rush the protesters.

Slow motion video of police officer dropping his motorcycle and then attacking protesters

(May 14: the video is no longer public at this time. I’m guessing it was made private at the request of the legal defense of the protesters involved. I am hoping Benn will make the video public again once all criminal cases have been dropped or completed.)

Benn was arrested after recording the incident in the video above. His wife, who was also documenting the action with her phone, was forced up against a bus with a police baton to her throat. Her phone was confiscated and is apparently lost — presumably destroyed by the DPD. The couple was interviewed as part of a CBS4 report a few days after the protest which is available online as “Pregnant Woman’s Phone Taken During Police Protest That Ends In Arrests” (May 4, 2015).

On May 22nd, Michael Moore, the bicyclist in question, posted to his Facebook page that all three charges filed against him had been dismissed (assault on a peace officer, criminal mischief, and resisting arrest). According to a report at NotMyTribe.com, Moore spent two days in jail after his arrest.

So the aggression on the part of DPD seems to have been largely unprovoked. Perhaps the situation in Baltimore and the fact that there was another Denver-Baltimore solidarity demonstration the night before contributed to tensions which had the police officers on edge. It may be worth noting that Civic Center Park was also the scene of Denver’s October 2011 Mini-Uprising, which itself involved an officer being pushed off of his motorcycle by a protester.

But whatever the reason for their actions at this particular demonstration, the fact that police so often confront political protests at all is a curious phenomenon. Surely everyone involved — protesters, police officers, police commanders, municipal administrators — knows that police presence and police aggression merely extend the duration of demonstrations, cause injuries, and amplify (many times over) the impact on traffic and business.

During Wednesday’s march the DPD was able to use one officer’s embarrassing motorcycle slip as an excuse, but police will sometimes go to great lengths including undercover provocateurs to stir up trouble and elicit violent confrontations with protesters. While individual police officers may benefit from [overtime] pay, everybody else (including the municipal treasury, especially after any resulting civil suits are paid) may incur very steep costs. So what’s the reason such expensive crowd-control methods have evolved and persist?

In Chapter 8 of his book, Our Enemies in Blue, Kristian Williams provides a description of the various crowd control methods favored through the history of modern policing. During the middle of the 20th century, into the 1970s, police adhered to a strategy of “Escalated Force” (as opposed to previous strategies of “Maximum Force”), the implementation of which Williams describes in the following passage:

Dispersal operations are not designed to uphold the law or to protect public safety; often the police action itself will represent the most serious violation of the law and constitute the greatest threat to the safety of the community. Instead of the law or public safety, the police are concerned with establishing control, maintaining power. (p. 184)

Williams goes on to note that after the failure of police to control the 1999 Seattle protests there has been a return to the haphazard (but also increasingly disciplined/militarized) use of force to control protests:

Riot gear, tear gas, mass arrests, and widespread violence have again become common features of demonstrations. While police violence has always been a possibility, it has lately come to resemble an open threat. Some of this is surely deliberate. The threat of violence is an effective tool for suppressing the attendance at a gathering, especially among portions of the population who are more routinely subject to police attack. It also serves to criminalize dissent. When members of the public see the police in riot gear, it is easy to assume that the crowd they are monitoring is dangerous, or even criminal. But some of the police reliance on force is the product of desperation. They simply don’t know what to do, and while they figure it out, the old-fashioned, straightforward head-knocking approach seems like a safe bet. (p. 193)

And indeed things make more sense if police (especially riot police) are thought of as producers of fear and discipline rather than as producers of peace. For at least a brief time during a political protest, the protesters themselves perform the difficult police task of intelligence gathering by making themselves visible as dissenters on the streets. This provides a good opportunity for police to dissuade further dissent by putting on an intimidating display of paramilitary force as a sort of counter-protest, recording the faces of those present as a convenient means of surveillance, as well as visiting physical pain and the promise of future punishment at the hands of the criminal justice system upon a sample of protesters.

Attacking protesters also provides police with an opportunity to target known activists and organizers in attempts to disrupt the activities of already-known subversive groups. For example, one of the arrested protesters on Wednesday was Dave Strano, a well-known anarchist organizer in Denver. Strano was charged with several misdemeanors including interference and resisting arrest. As described in a weblog post by the Denver Anarchist Black Cross,

Dave was assaulted and received injuries by the police, including a gash to his head, a broken clavicle and a twisted knee. He was take to the hospital where he was left shackled to the bed covered in pepper spray, and they refused to provide him with crutches after 8 hours. His friends were able to to bring crutches to the jail so that he could walk when he was finally released.

Dave Strano after his release

Strano was bonded out the day after the solidarity march, but soon after he was released the district attorney’s office decided to charge him with an additional felony. Denver police then waited until he was driving with his children before pulling him over and arresting him a second time for the same protest, all apparently in an attempt to intimidate Strano and his family.

Of course, even powerful police forces are not completely autonomous. They must avoid too much public and political scrutiny if they wish to continue existing in their current forms — and existing is what police forces do best. Police, then, must balance meting out discipline at political protests with avoiding too many expenses and too much scrutiny-inducing controversy.

So the police response to any given political protest is difficult to predict. Some times, such as during May Day this year, they will remain discreet in order to keep things calm. Other times they will start hitting and pepper spraying after a demonstration has marched only a few blocks.

For the same reasons, police always urgently couch their violence in the rhetoric of ensuring “health and safety” — their survival depends on the public believing (or at least having the option to believe) they perform such a beneficial function rather than being seen as merely class enforcers. As an example during our Baltimore solidarity march in April, after the police responded in force and, unprovoked, went out of their way to inflict pain on whichever protesters they could get their hands on with pepper spray, beatings, and arrests, their PR department tweeted that “Anti-Police Protestors [sic] are now marching on the 16th St Mall. Denver Police are protecting them and ensuring public safety.”

UPDATE: Anti-Police Protestors are now marching on the 16th St Mall. Denver Police are protecting them and ensuring public safety.
— Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice) April 30, 2015

The way police describe themselves as those who “protect and serve” while providing “health and safety” is part of the same language of counterinsurgency which has become standardized over the past 50 years or so of uprisings — most recently in Ferguson and Baltimore — which seeks to valorize both the police and “peaceful protesters” while blaming the impoverished “thugs” who stand up to state violence for their own condition and discrediting those who sympathize with the oppressed as “outside agitators” and “white anarchists”.

May Day 2014

2014-05-11T03:05:23Z

“Space is social”

— Henri Lefebvre

I’m too shy for this social activism stuff. But for the third year in a row I went to Denver on May Day to find out what the local anti-capitalist folks were up to. On my first May Day, 2012, I was in Denver anyway because my trial the previous day went long and I had to be in court on the morning of May 1st to find out from the jury whether I was guilty or not. That year, riding the momentum of Occupy Wall Street, there were hundreds of people out in the park all day. Various unions had organized speakers, some anarchists were hosting a really (really) free market, I saw pro-immigration chalk art advertising some Maoist website. Everyone was there! Some friendly transient kids even managed to outmaneuver my reluctance and included me in their conversation. When it got dark we slept out on the 16th Street Mall to protest the then-pending (now in force) urban camping ban.

Last year on May Day by the time I caught a bus to Denver it was snowing. I walked all over downtown (and then some) for hours and never found any May Day demonstrators. But the walk itself was lovely, the snowfall being unusually still and the flakes large. By the time I gave up and went back to the bus station, there was 5" of snow on the ground.

This year it was sunny, and I found the demonstration immediately: several dozen people holding banners and red flags at the bottom of the steps leading up to the capitol building. May Day this year happened to fall on the first Thursday of May, the National Day of Prayer.^[1] While the socialists were waving their red flags near the street at the bottom of the steps, about the same number of Christians were waving flags, singing, and praying at the top of the stairs. I don’t know which group was exhibiting the more wishful of thinking.

A bunch of commies showed up for the National Day of Prayer (photo by Janet Matzen)

I was a little disappointed with the small number of people who turned out. In a park a couple of blocks away from the demonstration I had walked past people doing some sort of group exercise. There were more people there, stretching in a park in the middle of a Thursday, than the entire gamut of working class and anti-capitalist groups in Denver could get to show up for an international labour day. At one point in the afternoon an elementary school class walked through our demonstration as part of a field trip to the state capitol. I think there were more children in that class learning the name of the state bird than there were demonstrators.

But a small demonstration can be a good thing, offering opportunities for more intimate conversation and an exchange of ideas which is not possible during massive demonstrations. The topics represented by the banners and short speeches being made throughout the day included refusal of work, the criminalization of homelessness, anarchism, and the police (who were gathered across the street and around the corner — at times there was probably a police officer surveilling us or ready for action for every two protesters in attendance). In other words, these were people who were interested in the same things I’m interested in — yet I managed to keep to myself for most of the day, feeling increasingly disconnected and depressed.

It is geography that fails me in my shyness. When I arrive at a place, and I do all the time, I don’t ask, “What is this place and how was it produced?” I need instead a normative geography. I’m constantly finding myself at places, and when I do I want to know, “What should I do here?” But I don’t know. I never know what to do when I get somewhere.

At demonstrations like the one on May Day I just hold to a vague hope that my presence alone will add to the body count and thereby increase the effectiveness of any worthwhile message. “Look, they’ve got flags, megaphones, and a guy sitting on the grass. Maybe capitalism is bad after all!” I’ve brought signs to protests before; those are good because they allow you to ineffectively communicate without even speaking. This year I brought some pamphlets I made just in case opportunities arose to hand them out. No such opportunities did arise.

Another aspect of the demonstration which left me feeling a little disaffected was some of the ideas being extolled by the group of anti-authoritarian (self-proclaimed anarchist) young men in attendance. One of them lamented the NSA in one sentence, and then expressed concern over “chemtrails” in the next. Many of them identified with Anonymous, complete with Guy Fawkes masks and the insufferably melodramatic aesthetic which characterizes that movements' propaganda. They also endorsed the Zeitgeist Movement, which is a throwback to old utopian socialism inspired by a trilogy of conspiracy-theory laden documentaries created by Peter Joseph.

I don’t know any of the Denver Anonymous kids, so I might be reading too much idealism into a few statements I overheard. But I know substituting conspiracy theories and blind anti-authoritarian rhetoric for a solid materialist understanding of capitalism would not be unusual for inquisitive young anarchists. It’s my estimation that the people (who usually seem to be young men) attracted to those movements and theories have good instincts and motives, it is their sense of justice and their anti-authoritarian instincts which have guided them towards anarchism, but it is that same instinct which allows them to view conspiracy theories as reasonable. They know the world is organized backwards, and they are eager to accept any explanation for the current state of affairs so that they might have somewhere to direct their energy and their anger. They have a sense of their own alienation, but not an articulated consciousness of it. I guess unsubstantiated conspiracy theories are more accessible or easier to digest than solid Marxist and anarchist critiques of capitalism. That’s unfortunate.

I did greet and meet a few people. One homeless vet who has been involved in homeless rights activism on his own saw the sign calling for a repeal of the camping ban and asked me about it. I was able to point him to the Denver Homeless Out Loud website.

Janet Matzen was there; she’s the tireless activist who has been leading boycotts against members of the Downtown Denver Partnership in an effort to get the camping ban repealed. They’ve already convinced two businesses to take a public stance against the ban, and they are currently targeting the Tattered Cover Bookstore having picketed it (while also feeding any hungry passersby) every Friday evening for the past twenty weeks.

My favorite part of the entire event was the banjo player and drummer (members of the band Seizure Rights and pictured above), who were playing songs — both radical and popular — all day.

Haymarket Pamphlet

Wikipedia has a high quality article on the Haymarket affair. I adapted an abridged version into a pamphlet titled “Origins of May Day: The Haymarket Affair.” It is available in several sizes of PDF:

A half-letter sized pamphlet
A regular US Letter sized document
An imposed (US Letter) version ready for printing:
- Print double-sided (short edge) and landscape (takes three sheets)
- Fold sheets and assemble in order
- Put two staples in spine (using long-reach or saddle stapler)
- Trim page edges so they are flush (if necessary)
- Distribute to curious passersby at your next May Day rally!

Other Reports

“Report: May Day in Denver” by Morton Esters of the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (a Maoist group).
“Denver’s Turn-Out Small but Vigorous” by Randy Robinson of The Dialogue Chronicle (it’s the second story on that page).
“YouTube: A quick look at police watching OWS protesters marking May Day” from The Denver Post.

1. The National Day of Prayer does not always fall on May Day, but two other federal holidays do (less accidentally): Loyalty Day and Law Day.

Fasting With Murderers and Racists for Trayvon

2013-07-31T16:04:07Z

while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

— Eugene V. Debs

I am fasting for the duration of today in support of California prisoners who have now begun the 24th day of an indefinite hunger strike as they seek the fulfillment of their five core demands. Included in the demands are reforms to the Special Housing Unit system used to keep prisoners who are violent or suspected of gang activity locked in solitary confinement (sometimes for decades).

I am not the only one fasting today in support of the prisoners. Several individuals and organizations have endorsed today as an International Day of Action in Solidarity with CA Prisoner Hunger Strikers & Justice for Trayvon.

It seems odd to me, on first thought, to combine the outrage over the treatment of criminals including murderers and white supremacists in prison with the outrage over the death of Trayvon Martin. As a quote from the press release linked above for today’s solidarity actions put it, “we know the criminalization that killed Trayvon Martin, and the criminalization that justifies torture of prisoners is one and the same.”

On second thought, I find the intersection of issues to be a refreshing divergence from the anger focused on the verdict of the George Zimmerman trial. Instead of viewing prison as a solution to structural racism, instead of being upset that there are too few (or the wrong) bodies in prison, it confronts the prison system as the tool, the stronghold, the product, and the production site of white supremacy that it is.

“Do We Need to Start a Riot?” - Jasiri X

I'm Hiking the Appalachian Trail Again

2012-09-03T15:00:43Z

I’m beginning to hobble, my right shin is sore and swollen, I’m developing callouses on my feet… I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail again! Last summer I hiked from Harpers Ferry, WV, to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. I am now finishing the trail by heading south from Harpers Ferry to Springer Mountain in Georgia. I’ve posted my first trail report from Waynesboro, VA, about 160 miles in.

You can read about my hike last year, and follow along this year, at Diode’s Appalachian Trail Hikes (2011/2012). If you’d like to be notified when I post updates, subscribe to the atom feed or subscribe via email.

I’ll still hopefully get a few essays up here while I’m on the trail.

My Sentence

2012-07-06T17:17:44Z

I was sentenced last Friday for my crimes against the People of the State of Colorado:

$249.50 in fines and fees
32 hours of useful community service to be completed by October
12 months of unsupervised probation

The fine for being convicted of “unlawful conduct on public property” was only $50 (there was no fine or penalty associated with the “criminal trespassing” conviction). The fee to perform useful public service was $75. The rest is standard fees which I think go along with any misdemeanor conviction.

The probation officer who conducted my pre-sentencing investigation interview recommended first fines/fees alone, like he said he would, and secondly a whole variety of probation options (luckily the court saw fit to select only one of them). He also snuck a line in there about how I’m determined to be a public nuisance.

Mr. Wenig, Denver’s Chief Deputy District Attorney who tried my case, wanted supervised probation (expensive) and argued that my case demanded some form of rehabilitation since I showed no remorse for my actions. He explained to the judge that obeying (or enforcing, I presume) laws, even when they contradict one’s own conscience, is necessary to prevent people from justifying crimes and acts of violence by arbitrarily appealing to their own conscience. I believe his exact phrase was, “conscience is not sufficient.” This is the same argument he delivered to prospective jurors during voire dire.

Accepting as moral exactly those things as are legal is not only a surrender of reason and personal responsibility but leads, at least historically, to a support of atrocity. It was this legalistic thinking, the rejection of the possibility of autonomy for the false promise of authority, by Mr. Wenig’s 18th and 19th century counterparts which enforced for so long the devastating (legal) institution of chattel slavery in this country. Now I don’t know if the DA personally lives by such a simplistic moral philosophy, but I am convinced that he would professionally argue for and enforce any deplorable law with the same wasteful vigor as he prosecuted me for being a nonviolent resister to the criminalization of homelessness.

One Year Ago Today: Appalachian Trail Semi-Thru Hike

2012-05-17T00:27:24Z

One year ago today I began my three-month, 1,200-mile hike of the northern half of the Appalachian Trail.

My sisters, my dad, and I ready to begin the hike. My sisters and my dad hiked with me for the first five days.

My May Day in Denver: Trial, Verdict, Sleep-In Protest

2012-05-06T06:00:00Z

My Trial

On April 30th I had my jury trial for the criminal charges brought against me in October when I protested the criminalization of homelessness and the eviction of Occupy Denver by sitting in Lincoln Park and refusing to leave (“I Was Arrested at Occupy Denver”). I was represented by an attorney who volunteered to take my case through the National Lawyers Guild. Several of my friends and family members came to watch the proceedings (many for the entire day — thank you everybody!)

My attorney did an excellent job, and despite my antagonism towards the state and flagrant lack of remorse for my actions, put quite a bit of work into what he hoped was a viable defense. Despite ruling against my motion to dismiss at an earlier hearing, finding that the State’s actions in closing the park did not violate the First Amendment because they were content-neutral and narrowly tailored to the State’s interest (and so fell within valid time, place, and manner restrictions of speech), the Court did rule that my attorney would be able to speak about freedom of speech in front of the jury. She also ruled that if I were to testify he would be able to ask me about my property that was taken from me during my arrest and that the Colorado State Patrol subsequently lost. Two early victories.

The prosecution’s case was not especially strongly argued, despite fairly clearly having the law and the facts on their side in at least one of the charges ("Unlawful Conduct on Public Property" — it was undisputed that I ignored a police officer’s request to leave a public park). During jury selection voir dire he smartly emphasized the oath the jury took to determine only the facts of the case, and not to decide whether a law is just. He even implied that all laws must be obeyed in a sensible society. I wish I (or my attorney) had asked them to think about the absurd implications of that and to consider whether an oath which will cause more harm than good is an ethically binding oath. Oh well.

As far as evidence, the prosecutor’s strategy was to first demonize the Occupy Denver camp and then to condemn me by association. Neither step was very convincing I don’t think, even to an objective observer. Unfortunately my attorney was so focused on his negative defense based on my state of mind (he wanted to argue that I didn’t "knowingly" break the law, because I believed the law to be invalid… or something) so he didn’t focus on the hypocrisy of the State’s actions nearly as much as I’d have liked: that the mess in the park was the result of the state police disassembling tents, that instead of offering toilets or trash service the state offered 100 riot police, that even if there was a good reason to evict the camp (there wasn’t) there was certainly no good reason to arrest me (I was, by all accounts, sitting peacefully at the edge of the park). For my part I wasn’t sure whether to defend Occupy Denver, to defend myself, or to explain why it is unjust to criminalize living in public. When I finally took the stand to testify I was too nervous to say much of anything.

The trial went late, so after both sides finished presenting their case the Court decided the jury would return in the morning to deliberate a verdict. Before adjourning my attorney won one more important dispute: the wording of the jury instructions for the “Obstructing a Law Officer” charge. The DA’s recommendation included only the verb “to hinder” (not coincidentally, my arresting officer testified that while I did not resist I did “hinder” him by not standing up to be arrested — the first time he ever used that language in describing the events). My attorney successfully had the phrase “by force or by using an obstacle” added to the instructions. The next day being May Day I had planned to stay in Denver that night anyway, so after the trial I went and bought a sleeping bag (to replace the one that was lost when I was arrested). I found a good stealth site under some bushes in a city park — my first time sleeping out alone in resisting curfew!

Verdict

After my rather narrow defense, the verdicts the next morning were not surprising to me:

Unlawful Conduct on Public Property: Guilty
Obstructing a Law Officer: Not Guilty
Criminal Trespass: Guilty

My sentencing is not scheduled until June 29th, so that the state may have time to conduct a pre-sentencing investigation report to inform the Court about what sort of threat I pose to society and so what level of jail or probation I should receive. As part of that investigation I was briefly interviewed by a probation officer. Before the interview they had me fill out a form which was almost exclusively about domestic violence and substance abuse. So I filled it in with a lot of sad forever alone jokes and mentioned that while I’ve never had an alcoholic beverage before, I may have had sips. In lieu of filling in the “describe in your own words the events of your crime” section I attached a copy of my “I Was Arrested at Occupy Denver” pamphlet.

The probation officer was friendly and respectful of my convictions and he said his primary recommendation would be fines/costs with no probation, though he was insistent on emphasizing the penalties for breaking probation if that’s what the court ended up choosing. The insinuated logic was “your reasons may be righteous, but the state is scary and living a principled life is not worth it.” The thoughts he left me with as I got into the elevator were that if I end up spending 30 days in county jail “nobody would care” about my reasons and that despite my valid protests if I ended up in jail then I “wouldn’t be doing any good.” Throughout the interview I was the subject of all actions: I put myself in a position to be arrested; I didn’t take the plea deal; I was sent to a probation office that doesn’t have the resources to spend on nonviolent offenders. The State’s role in unjustly arresting me, in overcharging me, in compelling me to trial, in convicting me, and in subjecting me to a pre-sentencing investigation and possibly probation were conspicuously absent from his thinking.

May Day!

After hearing the verdict and visiting the probation office, I went down to Civic Center Park to partake in the May Day events Occupy Denver had organized. On my way I stopped to pick up my backpack from the county detention center where I left it in a locker while I was in the courthouse. While I was in the lobby a sheriff came out with a handful of cables and locks and announced that the lobby was going on lock-down so everybody who wanted to leave should do so now! I got out and found out the reason for the lockdown was a small group of protesters gathering to show solidarity for a few protesters who were arrested (for jaywalking) during the May Day parade (which I missed). One of the arrested, Sole, was slated to perform in the park later, but instead sat in a holding cell while they waited for his fingerprints to be processed. (You can read his account on his message board.)

By the time I made it to the park there were not many people there, but it was a refreshingly radical and friendly environment. Signs and chalk art everywhere said things like “Another World is Possible Ⓐ ,” “No Human Is Illegal” (although that one included a URL to a Maoist website), “Homelessness Is Not a Crime,” and several General Strike, Industrial Worker’s of the World (IWW), and class war slogans. There was a booth giving away seeds and tomato plants, a barter market (which I think was put on by the Denver Handmade Homemade Market folks), an IWW info booth, and food provided by some Food Not Bombs activists. (You can see some photos and reporting on this Huffington Post article.)

Haymarket: The Origins of May Day as Labour Day

Until recently I never took an interest in organized labour struggles. I have had no personal experience with unions, but what little I saw of them was a strange celebration of unpleasant work, wages, materialism, and hierarchical organization. I had, however, never been taught about (or never paid attention to) radical labour movements, like anarchism, which seek not only better working conditions, but the elimination of the wage system and of the separate employer/employee classes. One hundred twenty-six years ago Chicago, IL, was the hub of such radical movements in America. On the fateful day of May 4, 1886, the struggle for the eight-hour workday had spilled into the streets, and as the police were dispersing a crowd from Haymarket Square somebody — nobody ever found out who — tossed a dynamite bomb into the police line, killing one officer immediately and fatally wounding several others.

Eight anarchists were arrested for their roles in organizing the protests, seven of them were sentenced to death, one killed himself before the state could do it, four were executed, and the remaining two had their sentences commuted by the governor. One of the anarchists, August Spies, moments before being hanged shouted out his famous last words, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”

The Haymarket affair (see also this very good short history which was first published in the April 1986 issue of Revolutionary Worker: The Origins of May First) became an excuse for the propertied class to discredit and crackdown on socialists everywhere. The momentum for the eight-hour workday was lost, anarchist groups were constantly accosted by police (and to this day the dark bearded man sneaking about with a round, fused dynamite bomb is the caricature of an anarchist), revolutionary unions like the IWW lost membership to reformist unions like the now-dominant AFL, etc. But Haymarket also became a rallying event for labour movements all over the world, with the First of May becoming an international workers' day in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs.

Today more than eighty states officially recognize May Day as a labour holiday. The United States does not. In fact this year Obama, like in past years, proclaimed May 1 to be Loyalty Day in a not-so-subtle snub at the Chicago anarchists who gave their lives in the struggle for equality. In past years America has also officially celebrated those deaths as Law Day and “Americanization Day”.

This year, thanks to the organization of the various Occupy movements, May Day was once again celebrated by thousands as a day to commemorate labour struggles (see also the Great American Boycott of 2006). Including me, for the first time.

Sleep-In Protest

After the events in the park, about 50-60 of us walked over to the 16th Street Mall to sleep for the night in protest of Denver’s proposed urban camping ban (which will likely be put into effect later this month). I met several friendly young people, several of whom were currently homeless, recently homeless, or were currently hitchhiking around between jobs. They included me in their conversations, listened to what I had to say, and were generally very encouraging people to meet. The Thunderdome stopped by to make s’mores, coffee, and chai for everybody. Other people brought pots of soup and loafs of bread. (Somebody posted a Flickr photo album of the protest. I’m visible in some of the photos.)

At first there was a large police presence, but once it was clear we were just there to sleep they left us alone. All the local TV news stations were there both at night and in the morning to run short live reports on the protest. At one point during the night a very frustrated man who decided he wanted to get arrested that night tossed a large rock through the glass door of one of the shops we were sleeping in front of. Even to that incident the police reaction was subdued, responding with only one vehicle and at least ten minutes after it happened (there was a group of private security guards keeping an eye on us all night who reported the window smashing immediately). The guy who threw the rock was getting impatient waiting for the police (at one point shouting “Where are the police?!” while standing on the curb with his hands behind his back). The window was boarded up before the news crews came back in the morning, and nobody reported on the incident — I don’t think any news station was ever aware it occurred. (I can be seen walking in front of the camera during a clip aired by 9News.)

There is a similar sleep-in protest planned for next Saturday. I intend to be in attendance.

Crossing the Canadian Border

2012-03-23T16:52:43Z

I spent the week in British Columbia visiting my sister who lives and works there. I flew into Seattle where she picked me up and drove me to her home in Canada. While crossing the border we were hassled a bit by a Canadian border agent.

After asking my sister to explain three times why she lived in Canada, he had us park and enter the building for further questioning. I was taken into a room by a border agent there and questioned about my criminal history. While I was explaining about the charges being brought against me by the State of Colorado for sitting in a park over night and my upcoming trial, the same agent who interviewed us in the car entered and addressed the agent interviewing me, “I also have questions about the girl with the work permit. I don’t know what she is doing here.”

Thinking he must not have been able to understand her from the car, I offered a clarification, “She works in Canada. She cleans houses.”

“I know, but we already have house cleaners up here. Why is she here?”

That’s when I realized he wasn’t sincerely trying to determine our purpose in Canada. He was a Canadian nationalist trying to find an excuse to keep American labour out of his country.

When they were finished with me they brought my sister in for a private interview so they could ask her how she dare clean Canadian houses. Eventually, finding no technical reason to turn us away, they returned our passports and let us continue past the border.

They never searched our vehicle or our persons. They were not concerned with the migration of drugs, pestilence, or weapons. They were concerned with the migration of labour. At the border of two of the richest countries in the world. At the longest international border in the world, with few or no military fortifications, where anyone willing to walk a few miles could likely enter without detection. I wouldn’t have expected it.

While my sister crosses the border frequently and this is the first time she’s had a problem, this one agent’s behavior perhaps shows anecdotally the conflict between modern, liberal capitalism (the welfare state) and freedom. The more say workers have in policy under capitalism, the more wage-jealousy has a say in policy. Also, established welfare programs, as can be found in Canada, depend on having a high taxable-wealth to recipient ratio. Immigration, especially of poor workers, threatens to upset that delicate balance.

I can only imagine what immigrants face at most borders in the world, where they don’t speak the same language or have the same skin color, and where they are looking for a place to work and live instead of a mere vacation. This was my first experience at a border crossing, and it has reinforced my thoughts On Borders and the Status Quo I wrote a few weeks ago.

David Rovics' song “No One is Illegal” shares my sentiment towards borders.

(Chorus)
Will we open up the borders
Tear down the prison walls
Declare that no one is illegal
Watch the giant as it falls