Your book, like Elizabeth Hinton’s “America on Fire,” delves into a decades-long cycle that’s played out in many US cities: Police violence, followed by uprisings, followed by promises for reform and blue ribbon commissions that ultimately produce only “modest change and a photo op.” Did you come out of your reporting with a solid idea of what a better process would look like?
Ellis: I don’t know how you can look at Minneapolis today and say they are better for choosing reform over revolution. The mayor reorganized the public safety department, then there was turnover in the leadership there. The chief who was supposed to lead the transformation of the police force recently resigned in disgrace. Like most police departments in the country, the budget continues to balloon thanks to overtime costs. And at the moment the city is failing to even meet the basics of its court-mandated reforms. By definition this is insanity, right?
I think like anything in local government, having a process for the community to guide designs and offer feedback is important. But I think the starting point has to be a total tear down, not a rebuild. That sounds simplistic, but look at where making changes on the edges has gotten us? Revised training standards and use of force policies have amounted to departments that are effectively the same. The aim needs to be so much higher.
Even then, the agreement has led to a dysfunctional devolved government and conditions of the agreement which are in jeopardy due to Brexit.
To be clear, I don’t think a troubles like civil war would be a good outcome, but if that’s the only tool left in the shed, I could see some people going that route in the hopes that it avoids the US turning into an oligarchic mafia state like Russia.
Ideally we can avoid that outcome by mass civil disobedience, unions banding together in a general strike, and grassroots communities building up an alternative system via prefiguration.
I understand you’re talking through the process, which is what I’m asking about.
I look at it as, if it gets to that point, there is a significant amount of risk that the right team will win and then there is a significant amount of risk that the right team will actually do what they are saying. It then gets into what other actions are out there which are viable and which other actions are easier to implement.
I feel like people forget there was a lot of violence and bloodshed over civil rights and that was political action through non-violent means. There also becomes the issue where a political movement has to implement the policies they are supporting; policies requiring greater government involvement require better administrators than what is currently out there and there will be tradeoffs.
And there will be conflict, but it is a lot easier to win a conflict with an army of voters than to try to muster an actual army.
Voting only works if both parties are willing to accept an outcome of a vote. There’s usually a tipping point where a group angling for dictatorship through violent means is not going to care about whatever the outcome of a vote is once they feel they have enough ability to force any opposing group to submit through violence.
Going back to the Spanish Civil War, the conflict kicked off because the fascists attempted a military coup, as they did not like the outcome of the votes. The options left to the non-fascist factions were to either peacefully accept the new non-democratic military dictatorship, or violently oppose it.
Hitler and Mussolini both had to play the political game only up until the point they had enough military might that was both loyal and willing to follow orders (Blackshirts and Brownshirts), enabling them to threaten or kill any faction that opposed them in their respective parliaments. At that point a populace voting no longer has any effect.
We are currently witnessing the US right-wing attempting as best they can any method available to achieve that loyal military might, mostly through ICE currently, but also trying as best they can to convert the US Military and three letter agencies to become loyal arms of the regime by replacing their leaders with loyalists.
Hopefully they will fail to suppress the midterms simply due to the sheer scale of the country and the still inadequately sized ICE to cover it, but should they succeed, it is likely the tipping point will be reached, and voting beyond that point will have no meaningful effect toward slowing or preventing a dictatorship, leaving only unions, individual states resisting, etc. If the dictatorship then increases violence to try to crush those forms of resistance, and unions submit, disobedience dissolves, states cease fighting, that that would leave essentially a troubles situation along with less overt everyday resistance (slowdowns, trying to make the machine less efficient, etc).
Regarding organization, BLM was organized how many years and didn’t get its political goals implemented? I bring up BLM because that is what the article is about.
There were protests for months and the burning of a police station, but then what? Why wasn’t BLM able to sustain a political movement long enough to actually fix the problem?
I hear a lot of people saying to focus on protest and organization instead of voting, but did that get anything actually done? Hell, Trump is back as President in part because leftist organizations pulled support and said both parties were the same.
Voting doesn’t take up much time, maybe a couple hours for the few people who do a deep dive on different candidates. Do you believe that organizing your community when not voting is a bad thing?
I think it is very counter productive. After all, you’re trying to get a political goal implemented. Why wouldn’t you want to influence which people make the decisions?
What do you believe people should be doing with their time in-between voting days?
Organizing, showing up to government events, meeting with government officials, trying to verify government claims, demonstrating at key times if demands aren’t being met, trying to convince others why your cause is just, developing candidates and running them if an existing candidate isn’t worth it.