Whew... deep breath. Every day, new cause for rage. Not gonna stop. So up to me to deal with it on a different register. No good exploding into fantasies of hard justice that lead nowhere, teach me nothing, point to no useful tactics or strategies. Have to stop reacting like this stuff comes out of nowhere--shock and surprise.
It's not. It doesn't. I could close my eyes and recite ahead of time kinda thing gonna come at me before the day is out. Only thing going to be different, be the details.
What it means to be in it for the long run.
Don't get numb. Let it register, but the way you have to let stuff register when you're in an action and bad shit comes down. You take a breath. Evaluate. Think what you can do to best take care of yourself and those near by.
Later... you find time with comrades, friends, with those you trust and love... with those not afraid of tears or hard words. Let it out, and give back what you get in support from others.
Then you go on. Cause it's gonna go on going on for a long time, and there's no room to quit, and no place to go to if you wanted to.
Solidarity, Love, Imagination, Resistance!
104x44 cm. underside of coffee table, 6-pack holder, paint blob, lampshade hoop.
61x41 cm acryllic smeared on mirror.
This is hard to capture in a photo. It's a bathroom cabinet mirror in it's frame (I think). Found in the trash. Smeared with thin acryllic, an image rubbed out. Still semi-transparent to the mirror. The image only shows at certain angles.
For more than five months since the murder of Mike Brown... with deaths to follow, one after another, there has been as yet, NO corrective action taken to insure accountability, of those who committed these crimes, or to prevent more of the same in the future.
Think about it.
Almost six months.
What are the cops to get from this, if not support for their self-justification, their maniacal racist thin-blue-line fantasies that cast as enemies those who they should protect-- as THEIR enemies!
It's like a set up!
It was bound to happen, sooner or later (amazing that it took so long!)... that someone was going to say, enough is enough. Really not important that it was a violent jerk who shot his ex, and not someone more rationally enraged by establishment refusal to hold the killers accountable. What did they expect? What do they want to happen--that the cops, so puffed up with their ignorance and self-importance and self-serving us versus them rage, turn on a mass of demonstrators and initiate a massacre?
Not like this hasn't happened in this fucking country before! If it should happen again, no one should be the least surprised. If one were to write a script with that as the outcome, could not be closer than what we've seen unfolding. This was my first thought when I heard the news. Oh shit... what's coming down after this?
The NYPD PBA rant that's been circulating... maybe that's someone's idea... to create the conditions for war. If it comes to that, I have to ask, is it time we need be ready to cross the line from "peaceful demonstrators' to armed asymmetrical resistance? Is that what they're pushing for?
I don't just distrust cops--I don't fucking trust anyone in authority in this country--not anymore. It's over. It's fucking over.
Why do I keep saying, there is no such thing as a good cop--when we know that not all cops do bad shit? Let me see if I can explain my reasoning, sans rhetoric, when I say: there is no such thing as a good cop.
First, there is the role. Then there is the person. The role is defined in general terms by what kinds of actions it involves. To keep this simple, I want to look at only one aspect: what is permissible within the role.
The persons who step into the role are not identical with it, and certainly aren't reducible to it—as persons; but while they occupy that role—the role of ‘cop,’ their moral or ethical character—their ‘goodness’ or ‘badness,’ is.
So when I say, there are no good cops, I’m speaking about a person in that role, as ‘cop.’ Not what they are outside of it, or in addition to it.
As the role, ‘cop,’ includes all those things permissible in the performance of that role, we have to take the unpleasant reality, that this includes killing unarmed men and women who have committed no crime, done no wrong according to the law.
We know this to be true, because cops who kill unarmed men and women who have done no wrong according to the law, are, in fact, given permission to do this, post facto, if not in advance, in that they receive no punishment, experience no official sanction or restriction of their duties, once the PR phase and “investigation’ has been completed. If by chance, disciplinary measures are taken, their unions will correct the official command, reminding the command, and us, that killing unarmed men and women who have done no wrong according to the law, is, in fact, permissible.
There is no contesting this. These are facts, confirmed again and again in full view of everyone who refuses to avert their eyes. As long as cops, who kill unarmed men and women who have done no wrong under the law, are excused, confirming that this is, in fact, permissible for anyone occupying the role of 'cop,' it will be true, that there is no such thing as a good cop.
That not all cops kill unarmed mean and women who have done no wrong according to the law, is no more relevant than pointing out that not all cops stand on corners directing traffic. What matters, is whether these actions fall (standing on a corner directing traffic, killing unarmed men and women who have done no wrong according to the law) under the class of permissible actions for the role we’re discussing, namely, being a cop, and given the history we have before us, it is clear that killing unarmed men and women who have done no wrong under the law, falls as much under the class of permissible actions as standing on corners directing traffic, or appending actual criminals.
Of course, the weak part of this lies in how we define what is good, or bad. Clearly, if you believe killing unarmed men and women who have done no wrong according to the law, is a good thing, it would not be true to say: there is no such thing as a good cop. More significant—is the problematic of the what that role (being a cop) plays in a larger context. Here there’s more room for reasonable disagreement.
I’m not going to write a book here, so I’ll condense this to the max. If you concede that one of the primary functions of the role of 'cop' (remember, that means everything included as permissible—even if individual cops are doing very different things)—is to protect by whatever means, the status quo of power, and the status quo of power happens to be hell bent on destroying human life on the planet… well (forgive this rhetorical lapse)… there is no way that role, the role: ‘cop,’ is a good thing.
There is no such thing as a good cop
In a Facebook post, Nyle Fort, wrote of the difficulty of seeing past the neoliberal simulacra to find what is real.
Maybe it helps to see this, not as binary opposites, but different *kinds* of real. In the way a fictional character is real, *as* a fictional character-- which nonetheless has real generative effects.
The spectacle, too, is real, but a reality whose generative effects impair both thought and perception in such a way that we cannot see past the simulacra, or imagine, while in its thrall, another kind of reality.
That suggests to me, that the way to another reality--one we can inhabit in the fullness of our human being--is not like breaking through a curtain to something that lies there, already existing, on the other side, but in the very power of imagination on which the illusion depends, that our hope lies in knowing that that power is immeasurably greater than what has been drawn on by the oppressive system holding us hostage. Like in the Faerie Queene--the flames surrounding Busirane's castle, real enough to burn Scudamore--because he believes they are the wrong kind of real, a reality over which he has no power, while Britomart walks through them unscathed.
It's our collective belief in the simulacra that makes it 'real' -- that is, gives it power to generate effects--in that way, challenging collective beliefs is the very essence of the work of the imagination.
We do not dance as relief from fighting oppression; we dance, because out of the dance, come the flames of passion that will burn the citadels of our oppressors. We do not sing or paint or rap or create stories to escape from one illusion to another--but TO IMAGINE THE REAL WE DESIRE, THAT WE MIGHT CREATE IT AND MAKE IT SO!
Hoping for a discussion group sometime in the not too distant future at A-Space for artists who want to explore ideas on alternative means of support-- outside gatekeeper-gallery-to-investor servitude. If you're interested in this, let me know--and I'll keep you updated on when this might happen.
True, making stuff from your own materials and exchanging it for money isn't yet capitalism. The problem is with what happens after, and the way the gallery-to-investor system works, using art as an exchange commodity to create surplus value for the investor/collectors--which also screws the artist-worker. Think of artists, with very few exceptions, as low wage workers. Any artist activist would do well to give this a shit-load of thought. It means rescuing art from being subverted and co-opted by the establishment, which is an absolutely essential step in turning our creative powers to serve the revolution.
We will never make a new world by centralized resistance. We have to turn every aspect of our lives to creating new forms of relationships, with one another, and to the work we do in making a humanly habitable world with all our fellow creatures on this planet. Making art isn't a side dish we wait to serve up after the 'real' work is done--it's how we open the faucet to ALL our creative energies. Why the elite are so committed to owning and using what we do to image forth a world that looks like the one they want us live in, the one where they own us and the labor of all.
See also
Imagination Shall Make Us Free
81x91 cm Acrylic on canvas
