Many are describing these acts as a “protest” of the horrific conditions at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison. That is a mistake. It was a protest when Demetrius Wallace, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, and 12 other imprisoned people organized a food strike that lasted nearly two weeks for Wallace and 71 days for Rashid. In retaliation, the prison punished Wallace by revoking his right to see friends and had guards threaten, stalk, and harass said friends. Wallace himself was already suffering additional punishment for attempting to use the “proper” channels to defend himself — for daring to bring a lawsuit against guards who had ruthlessly beaten, sprayed, and stomped on him while he was restrained. 

Such are the conditions at the Red Onion prison. Suffering intolerable abuse, beaten away from legal means, and exiled for peaceful protest, men are now setting themselves on fire. These are no longer acts of protest, or even individual defiance. These are calculated acts of desperation. Conditions in the prison are so bad its victims would rather self-immolate and roll the dice that they could be transferred elsewhere than continue their horrific routine. And what happens to those men that are transferred? They are sent right back. Wallace, the self-immolater of late summer, said that when he returned to Red Onion after two weeks in a hospital, his harassment continued, he was thrown in solitary, and his email and phone privileges were still revoked — an ongoing retaliation for his earlier lawsuit. These are just the men we know of. Wallace says five others were at the hospital with him in Richmond, Virginia, where he was being treated for his burns. If this is just the overlap of when he arrived, it’s safe to assume there are many more cases we aren’t allowed to know about. 

There is a widespread myth, one even those sympathetic to the legacy of the Black Panther Party (BPP) fall prey to: that somehow life in prisons has gotten better since the mass struggles to end racial apartheid in the United States. The myth that things have improved for imprisoned people within the vast penal colonies of the United States, in spite of everything we know about the continued abuses of the police state on our streets and in our homes, that their ruthless behavior will have gotten even an iota better behind closed doors and with complete impunity. 

Rashid Johnson describes an atmosphere of extreme paranoia and oppression, where every day prison guards try to pressure and barter Johnson’s fellow abductees into assassinating him. We might as well be describing the 1960’s conditions of the BPP theorist George Jackson, who wrote of having to constantly be prepared to divert a stabbing and wrestle his way out of assassination. Conditions at Red Onion, and, let’s face it, supermax prisons in general, mirror what Huey Newton described with his greatly radicalizing exposure to the U.S. prison colony — lying in a tiny cell with a hole in the middle, slowly filled with his own excrement. Dogs, classically used by fascist police during the Civil Rights era to assault and intimidate protestors, are used in Red Onion. Rashid Johnson describes systematic use of attack dogs to terrorize and brutalize prison populations. 

The imagery of the brutality of the war on U.S. apartheid is alive still, cordoned off behind cement and barbed wire, beyond photography and video. It would be wrong to say, “all that is old is new again,” since for the oppressed and imprisoned, such horrors never ceased. Everyday, hundreds of atrocities that might have sparked the fires of another George Floyd uprising occur, beyond where we can see or hear them, and are then denied by fascists like the head of Virginia’s Department of Corrections, who say that those lighting themselves aflame are ‘manipulative’ and ‘misbehaving’. Here stands naked the depravity of colonial capitalism. To accurately assess the current reality of our so-called republic, we need only turn toward the prisons, and not flinch at what we see, hear, or smell. First you see smoke, then fire. Hundreds of thousands of people are choking on the smoke. 

The NYPD purchased two of the drones, these “Digidogs”, for $739,000 using funds outside the official city budget through a program that incentivizes the NYPD to seize cash and other property from the community to be used for their own purposes. They call this “asset forfeiture,” and it is standard practice for the armed militias serving and protecting private property in every corner of the United States.

The police are empowered to seize property through forfeiture simply by claiming that the property was involved in criminal activity whether or not you’ve been convicted, or even charged with a crime. In fact, unless they are challenged, the police don’t even have to present evidence that the theft is justified; when the cops seize property in order to auction it off and keep the cash for themselves, the burden is on the victim of this stickup to show up to court and argue that the property was not used in a crime or acquired through crime. This is a very difficult process that often requires a lawyer and frequently results in the property staying in the hands of the police. With the cost of legal fees, you might even be better off trying to buy your own property back at the police auction.

Adams hosted this charade barely a week after announcing his plans to cut funding 4% city-wide in the new budget. While New Yorkers wait to find out what essential services are slated to be ripped out of our hands, we are presented with this unabashed mockery. Of course, we never expect the Landlord-Cop comfortably reigning over us to care about our needs, our rights. But it seems he is also incapable of basic human shame! Well, the budget is now released. So while he and his goons in the NYPD get shiny new drones to harass us with, what do we get?

We get a $1 billion cut to education! With all the glaring flaws of our school system, they must have done a rigorous study of NYC schools and determined that our children were $1 billion too educated last year. Never mind the underpaid and overworked educators who are forced to personally buy supplies for their overflowing classrooms; Adams is attacking the heart of the issue!

We also get a 4% cut in the Department of Buildings! These are the people responsible for staffing and inspecting construction projects throughout the city. Surely, the parking garage that just collapsed in lower Manhattan, and the 4-year high in construction site deaths are due to the DOB having too much money for hiring construction workers and safety inspectors.

And more good news! The Pig-In-Chief heard all of our complaints about NYC libraries being open too much, and has proposed cutting $53 million out of their budget so that they can reduce Saturday hours and be rid of Sunday hours entirely.

So where is all of this money going? Along with boasting about the record amount of funds this budget will keep in the reserves, the Mayor also reached a deal with the NYPD police “union” that will raise salaries across the board, some as much as 40%. This deal includes back pay all the way to 2017, as well as more flexible overtime hours just to tie a neat bow on it all.

Every time they ignore our demands that our money go towards vital social services instead of the NYPD it’s a crime. Year after year, they shift more money to the NYPD’s obscene budget at the expense of New Yorkers’ education, healthcare, housing, and infrastructure. And when that extortion is not enough for them, they also rob us in the streets at gunpoint and head to midtown to show off the cutting-edge surveillance tech they buy with the new funds. Tech that will, as always, be weaponized against the people who paid for it.

The NYPD exists to protect the landlords and all others who live on the income of their private property, or more accurately, live on our backs. Until the working class takes the reins of power from the exploiters, our taxes will always be used to protect these private property interests at the expense of our wellbeing. An organized working class fighting for all of our collective interests is the first step towards ridding ourselves of the parasites and their armed thugs forever.

Every summer, Portland becomes a hotbed for fascists. Those looking to earn their stripes by jumping unsuspecting queer people or harassing the unhoused enjoy an “open season” in the city. The people who claim to “protect and serve” the city are, of course, also inviting, perpetuating, and participating in the violence. Portland police Chief Chuck Lovell said in an interview that he is “optimistic that the bureau can fully restaff” and that “he’s happy with the kind of people applying.” Are these the same kind of people who collaborate with fascist organizations like Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, and the Ku Klux Klan?  Portland police have always had strong connections with the most vile and reactionary terrorist groups, dating back to the city’s founding. How can the people trust that these new cops will be any different? Nothing has fundamentally changed! The police only continue to maintain their reign of terror.

After over a hundred consecutive days of protesting during the George Floyd uprisings and an attempt to establish an Autonomous Zone in the city, the politically advanced elements in Portland have made it clear: the police are not wanted. Occupations were destroyed; houseless encampments were, and continue to be, ravaged; and chemical warfare was waged on the people, including the unsuspecting liberals trying to peacefully protest police brutality as well as those who had the misfortune of living near the “cool zone” (locations where police escalated violence). The many aid groups and community survival programs throughout the city are working tirelessly to serve and support our neighbors who are most in need. It’s the people who actually live here, unlike the majority of the PPB stormtroopers, that care what happens in Portland.

As Mayor and Police Commissioner, Ted Wheeler’s valiant attempts at curtailing police brutality and their more-than-occasional collaboration with other fascist organizations has, effectively, amounted to politely asking his cops to not do that. Clearly having everything under control, Wheeler was even tear gassed and maced by his own stormtroopers during his first and only attempt to align himself with protestors during the 2020 uprising.

The primary function of the police is to protect private property. Given Wheeler’s family history as an heir to a timber logging magnate — one of the biggest capitalists to settle in Oregon, even having a town named after his ancestor — his decisions as Mayor and Police Commissioner begin to make more sense when we understand that he is first and foremost a capitalist; the class the police truly protect. Knowing this, we can be assured that, when it at last becomes a question of defending his own property, his own “prosperity,” he will side with the dogs of the empire and sic his stormtroopers on anyone who dares to hold him accountable. 

Let us say it without equivocation, so we cannot be mistaken, so no one can say we meant something else: the cops, these rabid dogs, have no place in our city.  They have given us nothing but grief and hardship. From destroying the unhoused’s encampments to gassing us in the streets and in our homes, the police have shown their contempt for and their betrayal of the working class. Portland yearns for peace, but without justice, there can be no peace. We will not be free until we abolish the police, and, in its place, build a system that serves the masses and their will rather than the interests of the wealthiest few. 

Only through the abolition of the current state of things can we move forward to build a better world. Only socialism is capable of this task.  As long as private property exists, it will need police to protect it. As long as wage labor exists, it will need the dogs of the empire to break strikes and send us back to work. As long as the empire seeks to colonize stolen land and put the ghosts of those who occupied it before us — in stewardship, not in ownership — into the ground, it will need the police. But we, the workers, do not need them. The police are the first line of defense for the settler empire. To allow their ranks to grow is to give succor and aid to our enemies. For each cop hired, that’s food from a hungry worker’s child. For each baton-twirling trigger-happy goon given a badge, that’s another soldier in the enemy’s uniform.

We say no more.