[D66] No Demands

[R.O.]

http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/no-demands

No Demands
Alexander Galloway
June 3, 2020	

They have helicopters and armored vehicles. They're driving cars into 
crowds, firing teargas, and flash grenades. They're beating people with 
batons and trampling them with horses. They're murdering people in broad 
daylight. The brutality is flagrant and obscene. Yet "it's not police 
brutality, it's police practice," as Professor Dylan Rodriguez so 
accurately put it.

A healthy society must abolish its repressive state apparatus. I favor 
the abolition of the police, prisons, and the military. For the short 
term, we must put all police departments in immediate receivership, 
confiscating weapons and armor, then defund, demilitarize, and 
ultimately dismantle them. If you want to learn more about policing and 
prisons, I recommend reading the work of, among others, Michelle 
Alexander, Angela Davis, Alex Vitale, and Jackie Wang.

For the long term, all arms of the repressive state apparatus -- if any 
remnants still exist -- should be run on a principle of citizen service. 
Military service and policing must not be waged labor staffed by 
well-funded mercenaries. The concept of a "for profit" prison is obscene.

I support protest as a human right. Striking and agitating should be 
held in high esteem. While I ultimately consider non-violence to be both 
politically and strategically superior, media and popular hysteria 
around so-called rioting and looting is absurd. On the sources and uses 
of violence I recommend reading Frantz Fanon's classic text on racism 
and colonialism The Wretched of the Earth.

Since police sadism is evidence of a deeply distressed world, I call for 
a wholesale reinvention of society along principles of justice and human 
dignity. This will begin with an acknowledgment of the worth of all 
individuals and communities, particularly poor, black, and immigrant 
communities who have endured so much for so long. I support reparations 
for American slavery and decades of anti-black discrimination. This 
would include the redistribution of money and land, plus a broad social 
movement toward "truth and reconciliation."

Anti-black racism is deeply intertwined with capitalism and economic 
injustice. I thus support the creation of a new International labor 
movement. The aim of this movement would be to orient society toward the 
flourishing of all people, starting with the abolition of capitalism and 
an end to the exploitation of labor. Society should be organized around 
principles of citizen participation and radical democracy. To this end, 
I support the Green New Deal and advocate an immediate de-carbonization 
of the world economy, paired with a jobs guarantee and a housing guarantee.

Our society is injured and scarred. To encourage spiritual and bodily 
well-being, I support universal basic services, beginning with universal 
single-payer healthcare. As the current pandemic so vividly 
demonstrates, the for-profit hospital, medical insurance, and 
pharmaceutical industries are a public health nuisance and should be 
abolished, to be replaced by institutions working toward the collective 
good.

I support immediate expropriation of the wealth of billionaires, as well 
as the introduction of a global wealth tax. Following the ancient 
principle of debt jubilee, reprised recently by David Graeber, I 
advocate an immediate dismissal of all debt, including all student debt 
and so-called "structural adjustment" debt held by nations in the global 
south. Eliminating debt helps all people, but economic studies have 
shown that it particularly helps people of color. These debts should not 
be "forgiven" since that simply perpetuates a new form of symbolic debt; 
they should be dismissed and obliterated, ushering in a new golden age.

Our political leaders are abject failures. Members of congress, 
governors, and mayors both white and black have abandoned us. They 
should all be recalled, followed by a new constitutional convention on 
world democracy populated by citizen delegations. The current American 
president is a contemptible human being who should be immediately 
removed from office, brought to justice for his many crimes (political, 
moral, sexual), and excommunicated from planet Earth in the next 
available NASA capsule.