Anti-fascists Spread Across Country
In this issue: Good Riddance: Cops TV
By James R Smith
The President has threatened, once again, to send in the military to an American city. This time it’s Seattle. Even though there is no riot going on (the police are behaving for now), protesters have taken over a few square blocks and an abandoned police precinct in the Capital Hill district. They are calling the newly liberated neighborhood, the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). There is music, there are films, there is free food, there are friendly, liberated people and there are no police. Trump must be on the verge of apoplexy. Imagine, those people are finding out they don’t need us, thinks Trump.
Trump, the right wing and the media are complaining about the Antifa, Rappers and a terrorist warlord. What could be more racist? It is ironic that Trump would be against anti-fascists, since this country fought a war against fascism, so we were told, from 1941-45 in which about 416,000 Americans perished. That is nearly four times as many as have died from Covid-19, so far. So aren’t almost all of us anti-fascist? Or maybe, he just doesn’t like the contraction, antifa. A small number of anti-fascists call themselves antigua and break windows, etc. at protests. Is this some kind of reverse psychology make people think profa, or pro-fascists are the nice people?
Capital Hill has long been a progressive oasis in Seattle. When thousands of protesters, including about 30,000 AFL-CIO union member, went to Seattle in 1999 for the anti-capitalist globalization demonstrations against the WTO (World Trade Organization, many of us retreated to the Capital Hill district when the constant gas attacks made us long for fresh air. The final stand of the die-hard protesters was in that area. So it stands to reason that the residents would be receptive to CHAZ. At least, there’s no gassing.
In some ways, the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone is similar to what Occupy did a few years ago, although the CHAZ is much larger than the terriroty controlled by Occupy. Will Autonomous Zones spring up across the country? Occupy began as Occupy Wall Street on Sept. 17, 2011, and soon spread to nearly every city in the U.S.. At its height, there were 1300 Occupy locations. After a while, it dwindled away as people got tired of their small little countries.
On the other hand, CHAZ could be met with force and violence unless protesters rally to its support, and/or create similar zones everywhere. Washington DC would be a good place for an autonomous zone, perhaps around the White House, Congress, the secret police headquarters, or elsewhere.
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“Bad Boy” COPS is finally cancelled
One of the worst shows on TV, COPS, is finally over. If you missed it, and how could you, it was on Fox, Spike and Paramount from 1989 until after the anti-police brutality protests began. On June 1, Paramount put it out of its misery.
The idea of COPS was to have a camera crew ride along with police as they made their arrests. This led to all sorts of problems. The cops behaved differently most of the time. No swear words, no blatant brutality. Sometimes, the camera crew would interfere to help the police. They would actually go into peoples homes with the cops who were breaking in. None of the suspects were asked if they wanted to be on television during the most embarrassing moments of their lives.
A friend of mine. I’ll call him Bill was on COPS a few years ago. He was minding his own business while quietly watching the human parade on Ocean Front Walk in Venice, California. A cop walked up and looked in the bag he was carrying and said he was under arrest, as the cameras were rolling. It was a bag on mushrooms.
Now we all know that some mushrooms are psychedelic and are illegal because the man does want you to see what’s behind the curtain. However, most mushrooms are not psychedelic and can be purchased in any grocery store. Which were they?
Here’s where it gets murky. Bill later told me that he had purchased the mushrooms at a small grocery a block away. He told another friend a similar story, but she is convinced he bought them on Ocean Front Walk from a dealer.
In any case, Bill was put in a squad car, cameras still running, and taken to jail. While in the cell, the COPS had a test run on the mushrooms, which came back negative. They were not psychedelic. Even so, the mystery remains. Was it a Boardwalk scam or were they from Windward Farms grocery.
There was no evidence and Bill walked. There was no apology from the cops, of course. But one woman officer, still retaining some empathy, told Bill where to go to get a form requesting that his record be cleared. Yes, a rap sheet had been created.
Bill did so, and thought he was done with a bad experience. Until months later when he attempted to cross the border for a visit to Canada. It was still on his record. After the few hours, the matter was cleared up and he was able to enter a smaller, better version of the U.S.
Fortunately for Bill, he was self-employed, so he did not have a boss who might have been watching the TV show. No family members were watching, either. But is that true of everyone who ended up on the show. In all the publicity the show has gotten for being cancelled, there has been no mention of anyone who was innocent but still appeared on TV. Do cops just arrest the guilty? I think not.
Another problem with the show is the cozy relationship between film crew and cops. That was the same problem caused by reporters being embedded with soldiers during the Iraq invasion. What happens to their objectivity in these cases?
My friend, Bill, was white. Had he been Black, would the test on mushrooms have come back negative? How many cops plant evidence on Black suspects and other people of color because of their racism? A cop who would murder a Black suspect, whether guilty or innocent, wouldn’t think twice about planting evidence on an innocent Black or Latino person.
In the end, it’s only a TV show that got cancelled, and good riddance. Now we have to cancel the real thing.
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