Civil Rights Today Through the Lens of Yesterday
All across the U.S. we are witnessing the flagrant abuse of power by law enforcement, and the denial of our constitutionally guaranteed rights on a mass scale. The impunity with which these violations are taking place in many respects are a testament to the great chasms that keep “we the people” divided, divisions which are encouraged by the power structure.
That the most vocal supporters of the police also tend to be the loudest proponents of our rights and freedoms in any other instance highlights the absurdity of the world we live in. Like poor Yossarian in Catch 22 we find ourselves confronted by the miraculous disappearance of our rights just as we go to exercise them. It seems that the freedoms and rights promised in the Constitution exist only so long as we don’t use them. Once we try to use them, suddenly they’re gone.
We have a free press until journalists are arrested and assaulted while reporting the news. We have the right to peaceably assemble until the police tell us we don’t and fire off tear gas and rubber bullets. We have certain rights as accused — reasonable bail and a quick and speedy trial by a jury of our peers being the most prominent — until we’re arrested without cause and set an unreasonably high bail. We also have the right to bear arms and resist government oppression — yet somehow this must be done without any violence.
After all, there is an added layer of absurdity. We have our First Amendment rights until we try to exercise them, at which stage the violence of the state makes it clear those rights no longer exist. Once citizen-activists get wise to this and fight back, they suddenly find that their right to express dissent peacefully has reappeared but now that they are getting violent the police are justified in brutalizing them. I call this “the riot defense,” and it is heavily relied upon by those seeking to justify police use of excessive force.
Inevitably we find ourselves bogged down in trying to figure out which came first; the tear gas or the looting, the rubber bullets or the rocks and bricks. That the police showed up to the party dressed for a fight is overlooked. That the Second Amendment gives us the right to take violent action against oppression is overlooked. In the end, the message behind the protests is also overlooked as each side seeks to justify the violence.
This confusion should not be surprising. In the fog of war, so to speak, it can become difficult to pinpoint the moment a peaceful assembly of citizen-activists breaks out into clashes with law enforcement. After all, historians still debate whether it was a minuteman or redcoat who fired the “shot heard ‘round the world” on the village green at Lexington.
History is a useful tool in a case like this, allowing us to see through the tear gas. When we analyze the events of today through the lens of yesterday, we can begin to establish a pattern of behavior. In this case, what we uncover is decades worth of the U.S. government, the established media, the FBI, and local law enforcement seeking to undermine civil rights and progressive movements. That they have done this by any means necessary — surveillance, infiltration, use of agent provocateurs, harassment, illegal searches and arrests, and outright murder — becomes very clear. What also becomes clear is that this reaction on the part of the power structure does not differ whether the movement professes non-violence or violence as the means to achieve their end, any challenge to their authority is neutralized with extreme prejudice.
By Any Means Necessary: Silencing Dissent
In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI spearheaded the war against dissent under the auspices of fighting the Communist menace, Hoover’s crusade targeted a host of New Left and Civil Rights movements ranging from Martin Luther King’s ‘Search Results Web results Southern Christian Leadership Conference’ to the Weather Underground. At a time when white hate groups like the KKK were regularly involved public whippings, murders and voter intimidation, the government still considered groups that advocated civil rights for all to be a greater threat to the country. An FBI informant was part of the crew of white supremacists who committed the Birmingham Church bombing that killed four young black girls, and the FBI also had plenty of advance warning for the KKK violence unleashed on the Freedom Riders upon which they chose not to act (local law enforcement gave their tacit approval, and in one case gave them a time limit during which they could do what they wanted to the citizen-activists taking part in the Freedom Rides. Clearly the dream of Dr. King was a greater threat to the establishment then the white vigilante groups which tried to preserve the status quo.
No group came under more pressure than the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (later just Black Panther Party). In fact, of 295 authorized COINTELPRO actions, 233 were directed against this group. It’s obvious to see why given the government’s preference for maintaining systemic oppression as opposed to ensuring equality and just for all citizens. The BPP’s Ten Point Program, with its multifaceted attempt to wage war on the power structure that was holding the residents of the inner city down, posed a direct threat. It sought to empower the communities by a focus on self-reliance, and to do so, they established health care centers, education centers, voter registration drives, and a Breakfast for Children program was proved very popular with the inhabitants of the ghettos where chapters sprung up like wildflowers.
They also advocated the notion of armed self-reliance. Most chapters sought to create safe environments in the neighborhoods they set up in and frequently played a role in cracking down on vice crimes and theft. They organized community patrols that followed police cars through the neighborhoods, so they would be present to alert citizens of their rights and to protect them from the casual brutality that was even more common then than now. The idea of Black Power was that these communities didn’t need a handout, they needed to be left alone by invasive influences that did nothing but hold these communities back. Like Dr. King, the BPP also intertwined the issues of racism and classism. This smacked off communism to Hoover, and their elimination was made a priority.
The FBI and local law enforcement utilized a variety of methods for neutralizing the BPP as a vehicle for change. They sought to foster rifts between the BPP and other groups, like the Rangers gang in Chicago, Karanga’s US in Oakland, and activists like Stokely Carmichael by mailing fraudulent letters and cartoons. The FBI was actively encouraging violence between these groups, and gloated over their success whenever someone was murdered in the feuds that followed. They frequently raided BPP offices without warrants or under false pretenses, confiscating papers, financial accounts, legally owned fire arms, and destroying supplies utilized in the various BPP community self-help programs. They utilized agent provocateurs to encourage different BPP chapters to launch violent attacks on the state and provide them with supplies in order to justify their mass arrest, like the New York 21. BPP members could expect to be frequently put in prison, given unreasonably high bail, and a lengthy wait for the trial to begin. In some instances, the FBI and law enforcement used assassination as well, such as the predawn raid the led to the death of Fred Hampton in Chicago.
COINTELPRO was exposed in the mid 1970s and the resultant senate hearing brought a lot of evidence to life that the FBI was flagrantly violating the rights of citizen activists and people suspected of community sympathies. The last twenty years has seen a return to the methods and mentality of Hoover’s FBI on behalf of American law enforcement, safe to operate behind the aegis of the War on Terror. The War on Terror has resulted primarily in the rollback of our rights and the strengthening of the police state, which has benefited from new communication and operational protocols that encourage inter-department sharing of information and mutual support. These in turn have often split time between waging the endless War on Terror and counteracting the rekindling of progressive and civil rights movements.
In the 1990s, actions and protests aimed at representatives of global capitalism, like the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank, attracted the attention of American law enforcement. Once again, a movement that sought to address the inequalities produced by this experiment in capitalism caused the power structure some worry. At the Philadelphia GOP National Convention in 2000, various actions were taken against groups organizing in protest of the convention. In one instance, a group that manufactured large effigies was infiltrated by a trio of undercover state troopers. They encouraged the group to commit acts of violence, and drank and smoked while doing organizing work. The group was framed for producing explosives and arrested en masse, with a ludicrously high bail leading to the assurance that they would be out of commission during the convention.
The resurgence of the civil rights movement in the wake of George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin, the event which led to the founding of BLM, has from the get-go been the target of the power structure. Infiltration by undercover cops and active campaigns by the police and establishment media to discredit the organization as radical, advocating black supremacy, and as Marxist mirror similar campaigns waged against the BPP in their heyday. BLM, like their BPP forebears, also suffers from the media campaign that associates them with violence and property damage. Though civil rights activists would argue it is the reactionary police response that unleashes the violence, the question of figuring out who starts it is often impossible to answer.
That’s why the actions of the water protectors at Standing Rock — and more importantly the actions of law enforcement and the private security firms hired by the oil companies — are vitally important to understand. On the plains of North Dakota there were no buildings to burn or stores to loot, the perfectly constitutional exercising of our civil rights by the water protectors did not provide an easy way to violently suppress them by utilizing the logic of the “riot defense.” This didn’t matter. By standing against the interests of Big Oil they signed themselves up to be targeted as a threat to the system which exploits the land and the people. The FBI and local law enforcement, as well as private security companies staffed primarily by veterans of our nation’s military, lost no time in attacking this movement.
This offensive featured a mix of old tactics with new. Undercovers were infiltrated into camps at Standing Rock to keep track of movements, create rifts (between natives and non-natives, advocates of non-violence and advocated of more active measures), and to discredit and manipulate the movement into aggressive acts that would justify a full-on crackdown. They also aimed to turn the local population against the protesters by accusing them of being involved in cattle-rustling. Those protesters who were arrested often faced exaggerated bail and charges, as is per usual. The National Guard established road blocks where they photographed every vehicle and person that went into the camps, and other forms of surveillance were a daily presence.
But the situation of the Standing Rock protest also featured the cooperation between law enforcement and private security firms. This proved a convenient loophole, as actions that might be considered unconstitutional for the FBI to do could be done by a private company. These private companies conducted extensive surveillance of activists across the country (including a church in Chicago, a seventeen-year-old girl and her friends in Iowa, the American Indian Movement, BLM, and activists for Palestinian rights) including hacking and access private groups and accounts on social media platforms to stay abreast of decisions and protests taking place. They also demonstrated a willingness to use violent force on behalf of their corporate paymasters, with most of them being former military this aggressive activity was natural.
At Standing Rock there were no riots, but that didn’t stop the violence of the state. Tasers, rubber bullets, water cannons in freezing temperatures, tear gas and batons were deployed to cause the water protectors to abandon their defense of that land. The violence at Standing Rock represents a damning piece of evidence for undercutting the “riot defense,” and those who use it to justify the acts of oppression and reactionary violence by the state we are witnessing in cities across the country. There is no reason why we should believe the state and its violent organs aren’t willing to deny us our constitutional rights when they have done so repeatedly in the past.
Just like at Standing Rock, fusion centers and operational/communication protocols designed for reaction to natural disaster or for waging the War on Terror are being directed against the grassroots movement we are witnessing today. Out in the streets the police and Feds go and beat their fellow citizens hiding badge numbers and name plates just as they had at Standing Rock. The ritual humiliation of arrested citizen-activists witnessed at Standing Rock (being left cuffed and more or less naked in the cold, belongings being destroyed or urinated on) can be seen today as well. In Richmond, VA a video showed a group of police officers taking turns spitting on a citizen-activist who was seated on the ground and handcuffed. They’re trying to make an impression, to intimidate people not to exercise their constitutional rights.
A few years down the road we may have more access to specific information regarding the activities of law enforcement engaged against BLM. The acts of agent provocateurs, right wing extremists allied with law enforcement, and undercover officers will doubtlessly be revealed eventually. In some cases, its already coming out into the light. That the police still show a preference for right wing radicals over progressive ideals is sad, but not surprising.
What should be clear to all citizens who believe in the promises encapsulated in the Bill of Rights is that those rights are under direct assault. We cannot let the power structure define when, where, and how we exercise our rights. We cannot settle for the illusion that those rights exist. If we hope to achieve and preserve any degree of social justice and equality in this country, it will be on the backs of those who fight against systemic oppression and the establishment who profit from it. This means rolling back decades of propaganda and indoctrination that predisposes Americans to consider progressive and civil rights movements as radical or communist.
Christian Desrochers
is a writer and amateur historian with a passion for the natural world and sustainable living. A firm believer that the future requires a reconnection with nature and resilient local communities capable of resisting the global corporatist structure, Christian seeks to utilize permaculture principles to eliminate food deserts and offer educational opportunities for marginalized communities. His writing can also be found on Pilgrim Magazine and The Seasonals.