A Measured and Moderate Response
I lived in New Paltz five years ago. New Paltz has a deserved reputation for its progressivism and its tolerance; it's a small community that was avowedly rebellious on the subject of gay marriage, with town officials presiding over gay marriages nearly eight years before New York legalized it. It has a vibrant commitment to the arts. It's a wonderful place and when press such as the New York Times has sought to describe it, it flails to encapsulate it, using adjectives such as “funky”.
It also falls into the financial imperatives of the region, offering a rural getaway for well-heeled residents of the city, so it must strike a delicate balance between its rootsy authenticity and its economic growth as a destination for them. Then, as now, New Paltz was minor hub for street family, by which I mean hobos, Rainbow Phamily, scumfucks or feral townies and any other transient community, themselves a difficult bunch to put a finger on or, sometimes, to embrace. Even on an individual level, the same wizened, reasonable, face-tatted guy you could have a conversation with in the morning could drunkenly grope your girlfriend and threaten to kick your ass at night. The problems this community faces are the same meted out to the impoverished everywhere: lack of consistent food, shelter, material security, an uneasy relationship with the more well-to-do around them and sorely inadequate access to mental health and substance abuse help, should they seek it. A reluctance to seek it. That New Paltz could host such a community is a testament to its commitment to real diversity. That some members of the community should be thorny or difficult to get along with at times is the price of admission for that diversity, but as long as we are known and accountable to one another, we're at peace and the likelihood for egregious behavior is almost none.
A couple years ago I was eating at the Main Street Bistro, having a late breakfast with a few friends. I was sitting and looking out at Main Street when I saw three or four police cruisers pull up outside. Cops got out and started grabbing people. A group. It looked like some sort of raid. I got up to see what was happening outside and when I left the Bistro I saw a short, aggravated man pointing out people to be arrested to the police. The police grabbed whoever he pointed to. Alarmed, I stepped outside asked what was going on and expressed some disapproval for the scene. People were being escorted up, down and across the street, into the backs of squad cars and the only commonality between them was their dress and assumed affiliation: they wore beat-up work clothes, were sunburned and had blotchy tattoos. They were poor.
There wasn't a lot of time to ascertain what had gone on. The gist was that there had been a minor dispute with one of the people being arrested and a manager of a coffee shop that had just opened on Main Street. The man pointing people out for arrest was the landlord of that building. It seemed the rest were being targeted by association. My friends and I paid our check and got some cardboard and tempura paint and made some signs. We stood in front of the offending business. We didn't chant or go near the entrance. We stayed on the sidewalk. Within ten minutes the police had come back and we were all arrested.
The details of the arrest and court proceedings were boring. We were charged with violation trespassing. We wanted a bench trial and went to court on numerous occasions, meeting with our public defenders. There was some cumbersome discussion as to whether the landlord owned the sidewalk in front of his building. Because everyone who had been arrested were, on a few occasions, not at court, our dates were pushed back until a newly-elected judge just gave us an adjournment conditional dismissal, basically a fast-track to not hear the case and shelve it, dismissing it if the accused stay out of legal trouble for six months.
There was little drama, but some: On the day of the arrest, we were told we smelled like shit by a village sergeant as we were being booked. One of our party, who was cracking wise to the police was arraigned with a misdemeanor, disorderly conduct, and sent to Kingston. In the newspaper story documenting the arrest, our accuser, the landlord, referred to the first group arrested as “street urchins”, a Dickens-era slur, granting human beings the same respect as bottom-dwelling barnacles. No one was hurt, or killed. Much, much more sensationalistic things have happened in this town.
I remember certain things, though. I mentioned that the first people arrested were part of the community and the arresting officer told me no, they were from Tennessee and Florida. He had missed my point. They had detained us on the street and barely spoke to us from behind their wooden, sunglassed faces, obeying the command of our accuser, but in booking, they were mostly genial. I remember the fear and anger of having my friend booked into the county jail for such a small transgression. I took no satisfaction in the silly, overblown nature of the afternoon, but I was elated that my friends had come with me; we were in this together and we did it out of some sloppy, improvised solidarity with people, some of whom we knew and some we didn't. Given only enough time to react, we had stood up together. By attaching our arrests with the ones of the first group, we were together able to moderately improve the legal outcomes for all.
I offer this story because poor people are still here. Police are still here. Privileged people with an over-inflated sense of power are still here. The most immediate lessons we can learn can be ones that transpire in our hometowns. And the lessons we can never forget are the ones of force, perpetrated on our bodies. This is a small example.
I moved to the west coast. Occupations have gone on here and been violently evicted by the local militia of the governing and elite: the police. I have been chased by riot police, hit and shoved. I have seen people pepper-sprayed and beaten for engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, trying to remain on common space to protest our great economic disparity and the very real, human actors that make it possible. People that, to this day, profit from it with impunity. We are learning that for real, tangible and ethical human freedom, we have to grow our capacities to work together, to solve our problems commonly and not punitively beat or confine those that fall outside the acceptable standards of our society by their mere existence. Because a lot more of us fall within that category now. While we have spent our lives internalizing the values of our economic system, the ones who control it have manipulated it to their own ends and they were allowed to, as long as we could have their scraps. As we have seen, their greed knew no satiety and they took us down with them. And while we fight in the wreckage, they were spared. The police have always existed to enforce the demands of the wealthy with a message we are thought to understand: physical force. They have hunted slaves and beaten their children when they courageously fought back. They have violently put down those striking for basic labor rights. They hunt immigrants who have committed the sin of coming here without papers. They keep the poor away from the reasonably well-off. Whether in passive acquiescence to their force or when people have decided to challenge them, they hold the power to kill us, at an order, if they wish.
Occupy is just another chapter in our fight for a livable and just future. In the movement, we have had a few months and many spectacles that will act as lessons going forward. We shouldn't forget them. A lot has been said about the police being potential allies: they are unionized wage workers and no one can deny that they are fellow human beings. Their actions and their office say that they will not join us. And to do so in their present capacity would only give us the tools of oppression.
At present, it may be hard to envision, even fearful to do so, a world without them. But human beings have lived in a myriad of ways since our beginnings on this earth, without need for police or prisons. Nearly infinite ways of living are possible. Yet we are kept from these by a privileged class, who are few in number; we are their labor, their consumers, and the ones deemed surplus are their oppressed. We are making a conscious decision to fight those people, to take responsibility for our existence and turn it away from the exploitation of the natural world and its people, its literal destruction, for short-sighted financial gain. And it is telling that, at every turn, the same people show up and prevent us from doing so: the police. They are not beating the bankers or their enablers in government; they are beating us.
Not much longer. We are in the early stages of open revolt. Collectively, we are withdrawing consent to this world, consent we never really gave and our villages and towns will look quite different. We will lose the police and gain brothers and sisters as their institution crumbles. We will make room for everyone among us and we will mediate our conflicts and amend our transgressions with compassion and fierce love. The presence of which makes this moment possible and the opposite of which we will turn on those who prevent the birth of this new and necessary world.
Solidarity, New Paltz: You're a part of me forever,
MK
