On Oakland Experimenting with Fascism and Impending Martial Law
“That’s not a chip on my shoulder; that’s your foot on my neck.” – Malcolm X
EMERGENCY COMMUNIQUE #2
On Oakland Experimenting with Fascism and Impending Martial Law
Rebecca Ruiz and Cat Brooks for Anti Police-Terror Project
Solidarity calls from Minneapolis have been answered across the globe—from London to Liberia, from Brazil to Paris, from Vancouver to New Zealand. A mural of George Floyd has even appeared where the Berlin Wall used to stand. Not only is the international community finding itself bound by the pandemic but we are bound by police violence seeped in historical, institutional terror that has sought to exterminate Black and Brown people the world over. It seems our unprecedented time just became that much more unprecedented.
Anti Police-Terror Project warned of the likelihood of a militarized National Guard two months ago in our response to Governor Newsom’s threat of martial law to ‘aid’ in pandemic response; or as we saw it, to police communities of color and possible looting in the wake of a total economic collapse. We hoped we’d be wrong; we prayed we’d be wrong but here we are. We face the very real likelihood of the National Guard coming to the Bay Area and increasingly repressive local police departments empowered by politicians bent on domination and control of our fight for justice for victims of police terror.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department (ACSD) announced the 8pm-5am curfew has been lifted. Make no mistake—they didn’t end the curfew because it was ‘mission accomplished’ as Sheriff Ahern claims. They ended it because of a growing social movement against normalizing violent crackdowns of civil unrest; they knew the more they tried to silence us, the louder we’d be.
Curfews are about escalating criminalization of not just resistance but existence. Curfews are a slippery slope to fascism and, if you know how the Bay gets down, you know we aren’t going down (or inside) without a fight. This week thousands of Oaklanders joined in a youth organized march for George Floyd. At 7:57pm, before the curfew technically even began, we saw flashbang grenades and tear gas deployed on demonstrators, including children. Over 100 people were arrested. Last Friday, police also deployed tear gas and shot demonstrators with rubber bullets, even hitting journalists in the process.
Infectious disease specialists from UCSF and the University of Washington have been circulating a petition demanding an anti-racist public health informed response to demonstrations against systematic injustice including a halt to the use of tear gas during the pandemic: tear gas makes crowds of people cough and thus spreads the virus. The U.S.’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that prolonged tear gas exposure can result in “blindness, glaucoma, immediate death due to severe chemical burns to the throat and lungs, and respiratory failure.”
What is even more alarming is the use of guns, rubber bullets, bean bags, and other projectiles on demonstrators by the National Guard and police. On Saturday in Austin, pregnant demonstrator Saranecka Martin was hit in her abdomen with projectiles fired by police. On Sunday in Ft. Lauderdale, LaToya Ratlieff’s skull was fractured by a foam projectile as she kneeled with a group of demonstrators taking a knee for victims of police violence. On Monday in Louisville, while enforcing a curfew, Kentucky police officers and National Guard soldiers shot into a crowd of protesters, killing David McAtee, a local business owner. In San Diego, May 31st, demonstrator Leslie Furcron, a grandmother, was shot in the face by a rubber bullet as she filmed the protest with her cellphone. She remains in a medically induced coma and may lose both of her eyes. The victims were all unarmed, and they were all Black.
Don’t get it twisted, Anti Police-Terror Project members don’t take our choice to take back our streets from ACSD and OPD lightly, but we are even more concerned with what could happen if we don’t act. Not pushing back at a sheriff and police department already drunk on power will only clear the way for more excessive forms of state violence. It is Anti Police-Terror Project’s mission to eradicate these threats to our community.
And more than fear, we are angry. Angry at the loss of another Black life, angry that during this time of pandemic, the plague of police violence still operates like the occupying army it is, and angry at the thought that this is going to get worse before it gets any better, so we know it is not just our decision to defy all forms of fascism, it’s our responsibility. The people of Oakland give their whole hearts to make this city incredible, we owe them ours in return.
In solidarity,
APTP
Say it with us, comrades:
Who Keeps Us Safe?
–WE KEEP US SAFE