As the Arab Spring enters a tense autumn chill, Tahrir Square remains a fiery political battleground, where struggles between the people and the state constantly churn and redefinine themselves. When police officers went on strike in October, they raised hard questions about the position of the public sector in the struggle against counterrevolution.
Thousands of Egypt's police, though tarnished by the shameful violence deployed by security forces during the January 25 uprising, are now staging their own revolt. Meanwhile, the military brass, initially lauded in the early days of the revolution when it refrained from crushing demonstrators on behalf of Mubarak's dictatorship, have become the target of public vitriol. The chaos -- part of a continual wave of strikes, demonstrations and crackdowns -- illustrates the people’s growing bitterness at the hijacking of their revolution by a reactionary junta.
So are the cops defecting to join the rabble? The momentum comes from struggling rank-and-file officers who actively distance themselves from the corrupt interim regime and notoriously cruel Interior Ministry. Alongside basic bread-and-butter grievances about wages and working conditions—the crux of all the strikes that have rocked the country this year—there are calls for an internal overhaul to restore the integrity and credibility of the institution.
According to one news report:
Police said they would hold an open ended sit-in until their demands were met, as around 12,000 went on strike. Egypt has 350,000 police altogether.
Some of the officers at the protest waved banners reading “Good treatment equals better service.”
Another banner called for “Purging the ministry of the mafia and the remnants of el-Adly,” a reference to former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, who is on trial for deadly police attacks on unarmed protesters during the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
Although the opposition was initially galvanized by the images of security forces cracking down on peaceful protesters, the new face of dictatorship seems to be the military, which has led arrests and prosecutions of civilian activists. The situation has grown more tense in the wake of sectarian clashes that many accuse the military of using as a pretext to consolidate power and target enemies.
The actions of the police strikers touches on a key question in any labor conflict involving public safety agencies: which side are they on? Cops are broadly defined as public servants, but when the state is attacking the citizenry, including its own employees, which “public” is represented in popular struggles for civil rights, a living wage, or accountable government?
In Wisconsin last February, amid massive protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on public workers’ collective bargaining rights, many police officers allied with the demonstrators. The surprising show of solidarity defied lawmakers’ attempts to split the public workforce by shielding safety officers and firefighters from the harshest provisions of the anti-union legislation.
In the Occupy Wall Street movements, the position of the police has again been called into question: are they tools of a tyrannical state or ordinary folks trying to make a living? Their position as public-sector workers contrasts with the the cruelty and corruption they’ve come to represent, but is the people-vs.-cops binary too simplistic for a movement that aims for maximum inclusiveness?
Filmmaker Michael Moore has aired a video (apparently popular on right-wing websites) urging local police to join the Occupy movements. Ironically, Moore drew a parallel with the non-intervening Egyptian military forces (an image that clearly no longer applies today, except for the handful of activist officers who’ve risked severe punishment to defy their superiors.)
Meanwhile in the U.S. demonstrations, veterans of occupations of a different sort have found common cause with the anti-capitalist protesters. But the tragic case of Scott Olsen shows that service members are as vulnerable as any citizen to the ruthless hostility of the government’s foot soldiers.
Following mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge, an Occupy activist argued in Liberation that the authoritarian nature of the profession commits police to enforcing the structures of oppression:
...while cops as individuals are not part of the ruling class, they cannot be considered part of the oppressed classes either. … They are an arm of the ruling class, whose function in society is to maintain the rule of the rich over all of us...
Rank-and-file soldiers in the military, who typically serve only for a few years, have at several key historical moments defected, torn off their uniforms, and switched back to the workers’ side in large numbers. Professional police officers, who have chosen to join that institution of repression as their life’s work, almost never do...
In city after city, occupations are being confronted by police violence and harassment. In some places, the police have already shut them down. We have to learn from these experiences. If cops want to be considered part of the 99%, there is only one way: by quitting their jobs as the enforcers of the 1%.
But now shift the lens to post-revolutionary Egypt, where police are not as comfortably ensconced in hierarchies of social privilege, and massive unrest has afflicted all sectors of society as the “new” authorities brazenly betray the spirit of January 25. The counterrevolution has permeated not only government but civil society as well, as even some union leaders are reportedly siding with military authorities by restraining strike activity.
Have Egypt’s rank-and-file police chosen, as public servants, to defend the people over the corrupt elite? How deep does their solidarity run, especially if the state continues to monopolize armed violence? The striking police could just be cynical political operators, or a symptom of a general collapse of Egypt’s social edifice. But their action nonetheless challenges activists everywhere to rethink the meaning of “public security” in times of revolution.
Cross-posted from In These Times.
Follow Michelle Chen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/meeshellchen
Jim Worth: Siege in Oakland's Ogawa Plaza
Politicians rarely go to court when arrested. Their tickets disappear. The real power players, the people who own the politicians, can actually get an officer fired for doing their job if that job means they were inconvenienced.
There are many good officers, but they need to follow orders. That thin blue line is used as a weapon in many ways.
Like everyone else, I don't like to see blue lights in my rear-view mirror (and I very rarely do...), but this one thing I can say: I have not the G-U-T-S to be the man or woman in that other car.
Thank you, all. (With the possible exception of that fellow in my rear-view ... ;-) ...)
Not too long ago, in Tennessee, some protesters surprised a city council meeting by showing up and telling the Council that they wanted to protest and that they wanted to know the ordinances concerning the use of city property in late-evening hours. It can be done. The long-overdue exercise of the right to assembly and to petition, is not in fact mutually exclusive with any law or (lawful) ordinance.
None of this melodrama is not aptly described in comparison to any other armed force controlled by national military's or armed groups managed by dictatorial regimes. This is simple manipulation of the American political dialogue in a paid for made for TV effort to romanticize class warfare and obscure a crumbling and failed administration. The time is well past for police to enforce the the law in every city were it is being openly broken. It is only a matter of time now. I suggest all the hip pocket faux journalists begin their epilog and impact pieces. Indeed that is basically what has been written by Ms. Chen. We jst need a paragraph on why it all failed and who held the police back for so long!!!!
But I don't care about them, as some kind of "us versus the police" narrative. The police in Oakland aren't the same as the police in Cairo. "ruthless hostility of the government’s foot soldiers" - oh, please. If you want to see REAL police oppression, keep working for social.ism.
the police here mostly are doing what the taxpayers want them to do, keep the streets clear so we can get to work.
May I humbly present a possible primer for both sides : Link
http://www.ehow.com/about_5413083_history-bank-deregulation.html
Some excerpts:
The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 (IBBEA) swept away all state barriers to interstate banking. It allowed financial institutions to locate branches in other states and to purchase or merge with banks headquartered in other states.
This allowed BANKS TO BECOME TO BIG TO FAIL!
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, repealed part of Glass-Steagall, tearing down the walls between banking, insurance and investments. Companies could now merge, partner and operate freely within each other's industries. The act also made it possible for the financial industry to group mortgage and other portfolios, selling them as investments.
This allowed the banks to raid our pension funds!
It appears both sides have more in common than they do with the Wall Street Cronies!
Nor is it up to "activists" to rethink the meaning of public security. We have elected representatives in office who pass laws respecting security, and other elected representatives to see that those laws are enforced.
The legislature in my state largely are members of a party I always vote against, and every year they pass laws that outrage me. I consider a lot of them to be, basically, clowns. Nonetheless they have far, far more legitimacy than a bunch of self selected "activists" who have somehow deluded themselves into thinking they represent 99% of the Country.
whose side are we to expect them to be on?
the mayors of NYC and Oakland, Ca tell all that need be told.
Contrary to believe that it is a dangerous job, the facts speak otherwise In fact it is not even in the top ten of the most dangerous occupations. The biggest danger they face is the risk of diabetes from all the donuts they consume per 8 hour shift.
They do not prevent crime, but instead they respond to a crime. Which is neither dangerous or difficult.
One of the attendees overheard a policeman complaining about the protest; another policeman then reminded him that the protestors were just exercising their First Amendment rights. The attendee went over to the second policeman later and thanked him.
When given the opportunity by the police to protest in peace, there are very few problems with OWS. However, when you run horses and motorcycles through the crowds, use tear gas, use pepper spray and clubs on people...it will stir up a blow-back and violence for some (many in OWS continue to protest in peace, despite when the police "try and rile them up").
Be careful of persons who attempt to infiltrate OWS to try and stir you up to protest in an violent manner. In the past the government has used such tactics (see "COINTELPRO") to break up movements and have the public side against movements like OWS, by making them look like "radicals" etc.
So continue to PROTEST...PEACEFULLY...but don't get tricked into doing what they want you do do...give them an excuse to use more violence.
Support OWS - http://www.thenation.com/blog/164172/fifteen-ways-help-occupy-wall-street
Use the "doctrine of nonresistance" as your guide! Out of many...ONE!
The rule of law protects everyone, but most especially ordinary people. In other countries without the rule of law, the rich manage to protect themselves fairly well, it is the ordinary people who lack protection. Your statement is an ideological fantasy, not reality.
And *my* statement is an ideological fantasy? Better take a long, hard look at whom the law actually favors, Cato. What's on the books and what happens in the real world are two manifestly different things.