The System, Karma and the rise of the Police State

[Im The Truth]

The System, Karma and the rise of the Police State

Dedicated to the many who have died at the hands of the police and to the police as well who unconsciously serve as the proxy to an oppressive system of whom they are co-victims. Hoping for greater and deeper consciousness.

Police State

You have the emergence in human society
Of this thing that’s called the state
What is the state? The state is this organized bureaucracy
It is the po-lice department. it is the army, the navy
It is the prison system, the courts, and what have you
This is the state -- it is a repressive organization
But the state –......
“and gee, well, you know,
You’ve got to have the police, cause..
If there were no police, look at what you’d be doing to yourselves!
You’d be killing each other if there were no police!”
But the reality is..
The police become necessary in human society
Only at that junction in human society
Where it is split between those who have and those who ain’t got....
-Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party (taken from “Police State” by Hiphop group Dead Prez)

What is a Police State?

The term police state describes a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.- Police state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I will have to modify this definition to capture any State which maintains order primarily through the use of Law enforcement and Police action. Under the category Police, I will also include private police like private security. This will be the definition I will be working with to make my point here. That society ultimately will be kept together (or this is what will be attempted) primarily with the use of “Law” enforcement and other related forms of repression on the levels of society where certain crimes exist.

Why does the establishment see it necessary to build a Police State?

The contradictions of our society are historical and structural and one may even add that it is culturally maintained and socially supported and has socio-economic consequences and dimensions. The economic hierarchy within our societies and between societies such as ours and the Euro-American complex has changed very little since the days of colonialism. Within our societies it has been slightly modified with a buffer of middle to high-class Africans and Indians who have been able to succeed despite the system but with the consequence very often of a loss of the consciousness of the need for societal transformation and a loss of the collective consciousness. They morph into a class who for the most part adopt the white supremacist rhetoric that the large percentage of the population who continue to be oppressed within the system are THE PROBLEM because they fail to try hard enough and no more is the system and its various manifestation problematized; “the structure is not the problem but instead it is these people who lack ambition and are too lazy”. The structure is formed of a number of things including but not restricted to the dominant white supremacist patriarchal capitalistic values*, consequent biases based on a range of dimensions(urban/rural, Kweyol/English, darkskinned/light skinned etc), a largely irrelevant and debilitating and disarming education system which fails to properly address history or language as would be relevant based on the composition of the population **, disproportionate access to resources etc.

The absence of any desire to properly address the fundamental contradiction(s) of this society leads to a policy characterized by suppressing or diverting formal and informal requests for change. A rise in disorganized, disorderly and dysfunctional methods have always followed more organized, orderly and conscious efforts at responding to the inequality and other contradictions of the societal order(which have been usually been ignored or suppressed). These disorderly elements usually take in more of the system’s ideals than the greater departure and depth of the other movements. The former is usually what is referred as the “criminial element” equal to what Huey Newton referred to as the “illegitimate capitalist” #.

To illustrate this we can look at examples both in the United States of America and in the Caribbean. In the case of the United States, there was significant resistance and in many cases brutal repression of efforts at addressing the racist, sexist and imperialistic nature of the society through agitation, protest and other efforts. Organization such as the Black Panther Party for Self Defence, were destroyed with many keys members eliminated by State elements. Similar attempts were made to destroy the movement, life and legacy of ones such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and countless others who were proposing to the society a more equitable manner of operation by critiquing its worse albeit dominant elements and values. The destruction of such movements created room for less conscious, less revolutionary movements such as the Crips and later the Bloods which although initially inspired by the legacy of the Black Panthers, did not have the social and political knowledge and consciousness of such movements and have thus become less productive elements in and to the community. Hiphop similarly in its early manifestations had a large component of very conscious views being expressed such as the likes of Public Enemy, Africa Bambaataa and KRS1. The later commercialization of the art form, dominated by white corporate America and a largely middleclass white male market with a curious fetish for misogyny and black on black conflict led to the market driven dominance by the less progressive gangster, bling and misogynistic hiphop leading to the more progressive elements being relegated to the “underground”. In Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, Rastafari put forward one of the most revolutionary movements of African people in their Caribbean again to point the society to its flaws; its failure to cater effectively to address the needs of the largely African population ( and to demand requisite change). This movement as well as elements such as Dr. Walter Rodney, Maurice Bishop and others less known were rejected, ostracized and killed. This here is being propagated by a people resisting their liberation for the sake of not offending or shaking the status quo. Conscious reggae music has made way for dancehall music and a people still thirsting for freedom have lost their bearings yet again.(Although I might add that the progressive elements were/are never entirely eliminated as sure as ‘truth crushed to the earth will rise again’ even with greater fury)

Essentially this dynamic operates as a sort of karma where opportunities to reform the society constructively having been foregone are substituted by less organized, less revolutionary and less constructive movements for less fundamental change. In a further bid to ignore the need for fundamental transformation the wholly untenable and unsustainable police state is put into effect. I will explain how it is constructed and why it is doomed to fail, not only on a national level but elsewhere as well.

How a Police State is supposed to work?

Persons who form the Police force arise from the shitty side of the very contradictions which they are employed to maintain by being part of a dominant approach which is more concerned with suppression than the addressing the relevant issues and cultivating a different orientation based on true justice. Most who join the force do so out of a lack of options for survival and meeting their material needs and wants. One is apt to note that the police force as well as the private security service is built up from those of the lower classes; the very same classes of those who they are employed to suppress. As a result there is always a supply of persons for such jobs because they have very few options. This is the same dynamic which assures the Imperialistic “First world” of thousands of armed forces, many coming from our very own countries, the world’s lower class(for the time being). However, in the very fact of the class origins of the police force exists the roots of the ultimate failure of this strategy of repression.

As very little changes in the inherent contradictions of this society, the police serve as a buffer between the upper and lower classes. A society which does not address the needs of its people and which keeps its people as mental slaves in the midst of a general culture of skewed masculinity, ruthless individualism and pervasive materialistic consumerism is sure to have crime. The shallow response is employed so a constantly increasing police force and private security service is employed both to suppress the "illegitimate capitalists" and the more progressive elements and thereby to ‘protect’ the society (particularly those who can afford and are deemed more worthy of the protection from these unconscious, aggressive and materialistic youth by other aggressive and unconscious youth in uniforms); mere low class manifestations of the dominant values of the society. The drug and gun retailers or final users face the brunt of the police’s wrath as they seek to ‘put their heart in their work’. These days police are shooting down youths randomly and with impunity. As stated earlier, this is the work of an equally unconscious and shallow police force who are bound by their jobs to serve these ends. How is this different from the African slave driver who is given the whip and some incentive to suppress his bothers and sisters on the plantation? How is this fundamentally different from the Crips and Bloods, two groups of largely unconscious youth who embrace the dominant values of their society while struggling like crabs in a barrel against each other?

The criminals who exist in the upper echelons of the economy and social strata are usually well protected on levels beyond the reach of the police who are only able to apprehend their messenger boys and girls selling drugs retail or engaging in crime as hitmen among the whole range of what they term the “criminal element”. It is inevitable that such a situation will breed its own additional forms of crime and may even enlist members of the dominant class who believe in their deluded fascination that they are rebelling against the system although being largely unconscious of the structure of their society and their privileged position within it are merely flirting with a life they do not have to live and can retreat from quite easily and even if found on the wrong side of the law are able to escape scot-free.

Essentially, the police state in the short term benefits in a very shallow sense those who serve to benefit from the privilege bestowed on them in the current structure of the economy and the rest of the society. But no such comfort and privileged mirrored and supported by oppression and exploitation is stable therefore in the long run it is doomed to fail and it will begin to seep into those very areas which before were assumed to be too remote to be touched. In places like Trinidad and Tobago it has already manifest in the form of kidnapping. Undoubtedly however, it is the lower classes themselves who are the first and biggest victims. Sadly because of a lack of depth in analyzing the situation, most are likely to see solely the unconscious “illegitimate capitalists” who they directly interface with as THE PROBLEM and they rarely(particularly in times of low collective consciousness) perceive the problem of the nature of their society. This of course is their rhetoric spouted out by the politicians and Government ministers who in addition proposed the shallowest solutions for the so called problem of crime such as building courts and the highly publicized “Peace and Love” initiative which can only give the facade of success and are ultimately doomed to fail, for crime and the ghetto(where the spotlight is pointed) is not THE PROBLEM but merely the lower class manifestation of it.

Why the Police State is not sustainable?

There is a simple reason why such a attempt at keeping societal order is unsustainable. First, society is not an entity which exists through coercion, in my opinion. The word suggests some level of consensus. If order requires force to exist then it will not exist for force must be enormous to ensure the continuance of such order and no country has proven to provide such force with much success into the longterm. Secondly, given that the force arises from the very classes which produce the “illegitimate capitalists”, there is bound to be overlap wherein collaboration develops between the police force and their brother, sisters, cousins, neighbours etc who fall into the category of “illegitimate capitalist”(more commonly given the exclusive name ‘criminal’). In St. Lucia for instance the Prison Superintendent has pointed out the problem of prison officers supplying all sorts of items to their relatives and acquaintances in the prison and in some cases facilitating escapes. Similar partnerships develop outside the prison. The following factor further militates against the stemming the real roots of gun and drug sales and related criminal activity in the society. The wholesalers of such commodities and capital assets (the aforementioned drugs and guns respectively) are usually well positioned to compromise and supercede the influence of the law and superiors(to common officers) of the police force in the exercise of law enforcement. They are able to pay officers to turn a blind eye or even facilitate some of their activities through measures like giving these high-class criminals forewarnings of raids or allowing shipments to enter the country through various avenues. For all these reasons and more, the approach taken currently, of suppressing rebellion(all be it disorganized and unconscious) as opposed to transforming the society and integrating the calls by more progressive elements to do so are doomed to fail and the karma will return with greater force in the next round. Unconscious youth who once wielded knives, now wield guns(both homemade and otherwise)

Notes:
# The following taken from the article Prison where is thy victoryby Huey P. Newton in the book If they come in the Morning by Angela Y Davis explains the notion of the "illegitimate capitalist" -There are two types of prisoners. The largest number are those who accept the legitimacy of the assumptions upon which the society is based. They wish to acquire the same goals as everybody else, money, power, greed, and conspicuous consumption. In order to do so, however, they adopt techniques and methods which the society has defined as illegitimate. When this is discovered such people are put in jail. They may be called "illegitimate capitalists" since their aim is to acquire everything this capitalistic society defines as legitimate. the second type of prisoner, is one who rejects the legitimacy of the assumptions upon which the society is based. He argues that the people at the bottom of the society are exploited for the profit and advantage of those at the top. Thus, the oppressed exist, and will always be used to maintain the privileged status of the exploiters. There sacredness, there is no dignity in either exploiting or being exploited. Although this system may make the society function at a high level of technological efficiency, it is an illegitimate system, since it rests upon the suffering of human who are as worthy and as dignified as those who do not suffer. Thus, the second type of prisoner says that society is corrupt and illegitimate and must be overthrown. This second type of prisoner is the political prisoner. they do not accept the legitimacy of the society and cannot participate in its corrupting exploitation, whether they are in the prison or on the block.

* White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy is a term coined by bell hooks in order to talk about the structures of domination that she claims are at work in the United States. The premise that informs this term is that different forms of oppression, the most prominent, according to hooks, being racism, sexism, and classist oppression, are all manifestations of a larger root cause. That root cause is the conception of power in society, the idea that might equals right, that the ability to dominate another through violence is somehow an imperative to do so.[citation needed]
The term white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy itself is a critique of this common conception of power, as well as an implicit claim that capitalism, racism, and patriarchy are interconnected forms of oppression and as such, must be reckoned with as whole rather than individually. hooks has also used the term imperialist as a modifier for this concept, connecting imperialism with racism, sexism, and capitalism.
Hooks refutes the idea of men as the "enemy" as untrue, ineffective, and a simplification of the complex societal issues at hand. Source: White-supremacist capitalist patriarchy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

** Composition of the population – The composition of the Caribbean population is for the most part a reflection of the populations who came via the plantation system pre- and post Emancipation, the bulk being Africans. A structure was established by which Africans fell at the bottom of the list of priorities in all sectors of the society. The hegemony of the white population both those based in the region and the absentees continues, this time with the added mechanism of proxy elements forming a middle to high class entrants of East Indian and African descent whose thinking and privilege serve to keep them from making any useful contribution to the fundamental transformation of the society.