On Armed Checkpoints & Voting
RELATED: Vote! But let’s not mythologize it — https://link.medium.com/kWn4XnK076
Sunday night instructions were sent out from above. We already knew that public transportation had been shut down and a curfew installed the day before here in Chicago, as well as in many other major cities across the United States, but there were new, more specific directions for Monday morning.
The city was instituting armed police checkpoints — a hallmark of authoritarian regimes of the 20th century and inside the foreign nations our empire has illegally invaded in the 21st century — for its residents. No one but people who lived in downtown Chicago, the financial center of the city, state, and indeed region, or downtown workers who could show identification to police at checkpoints that they worked downtown would be allowed past those points, the instructions read.
There were several armed checkpoints surrounding downtown designated as approved entry points into the city center where my wife works. We were told that public transportation service would resume in the morning to allow people like her to get to work.
That was not true. Early Monday morning we learned that the service lines that could’ve allow her to get into work through the intersection at the checkpoint nearest us we were instructed to use to get into downtown were not operating.
She could have possibly driven herself in to work, but eating that expense ourselves could cost near $1,000 per month. So, we decided I’d drive her in, which was fine by me, but then we looked more closely at the instructions we were sent Sunday night and realized that only the downtown workers would be allowed through the armed checkpoints, not any friends or family members they might be relying on for rides.
So, after waking up extra early we decided that I’d drive her up to the checkpoint and then, since the bus lines she’d need had been shut down by the city, she would rent a Divvy bicycle to go the rest of the way. We got in the car and she searched on her phone for the nearest bike rental station near the checkpoint only to learn that at the city’s request, the bike rental stations had also all been shut down.
So, my wife took her sneakers out of her work bag, placed them on in the car and ran from the checkpoint to her place of work, a hospital, after I drove her to the armed checkpoint. During a global pandemic, my wife the hospital worker had to show papers a mile and a half away from her job then proceed on foot the rest of the way just to begin her day.
I don’t know which of us was more stressed, as she worried out loud about my being stopped by police as a person of color. We promised to each let each other know when we’d arrived at work or back home safely.
As soon as we’d read the instructions Sunday night, I began to think of how it seemed that during a pandemic and amidst police riots, the city was being carved up crudely based on class and race. Downtown Chicago, where over half of the city’s jobs are located, and where the financial and political powers make their fortunes, would not stay closed even as the city attempted to lock down neighborhoods.
The wealthy who could afford to live downtown were allowed, but other than that only workers would be let in if they showed their papers to armed guards. The mask of downtown was shed, and it could be seen more clearly for what it already was, materially — a place for those who have capital to rest, and a place for those who serve capital to toil.
Some particularly vulnerable laborers are surely traumatized within this hastily implemented police state taking hold in cities like Chicago. In our now largely financialized and service economy, over 600,000 of our city’s jobs are located in downtown.
Many of those jobs are low-paying and require menial work. A lot of them also happen to be filled by the over 300,000 undocumented workers who live in Cook County.
Those people already often have long, arduous trips each day to get to and from work, and now these workers, many living in constant fear of law enforcement asking them for papeles because of their immigration status, have to literally face armed guards at police checkpoints and present papers after finding a way to get there without the help of public transportation or vehicles.
I immediately lamented, thinking that with military-style policies and tools being used in American cities like Chicago, the only people now allowed in the wealthy parts are those who are rich enough to live there or their servants, who now are required to walk through armed checkpoints for the privilege of working there. The rage from what I thought I had realized continued to boil as I drove off, leaving my spouse to be inspected and approved by armed guards, but then I became curious.
Sure, the email the night before had made it seem like the only ways in were at these several armed checkpoints. And, we followed those directions exactly and went to one of them.
Were those government approved checkpoints really the only ways in, I wondered? I wandered for a bit.
I am no city guide but I’ve lived almost all my life here in Chicago. Chicagoans know how to get to and move within downtown.
On roads and tracks, both elevated and subterranean. On foot, running, walking, or stumbling, at any time of night or day, and in any season.
Right?
So, I drove on, looking for ways to get East on my own, without the police’s approval, without showing my papers, without stopping to be evaluated by an armed guard. I couldn’t drop my spouse off at work that morning, but I wanted to pick her up from it that afternoon.
Perhaps every way in to downtown was truly guarded by police. It didn’t take me long, however, to realize that they were not.
I turned Eastbound when the path looked clear for at least a half mile. Then, I kept on driving, no checkpoints, no police in sight.
Within minutes I was where I would have dropped my wife off to work. Then, I realized the truth — we are not yet in complete military-style lockdown.
The city does not yet have the ability to stop every entry and exit into downtown. They are, however, trying to train us in compliance.
As people rage against the racist carceral system that killed George Floyd last week and has killed countless others for the entirety of this nation’s history, the elites and their guards in cities like Chicago are trying to get us back in line.
In relatively free nations like the United States, consent of the governed is largely required, in some form or fashion. The tool of choice for nations like ours, reactionary and headed in the wrong direction as it is nonetheless historically relatively free for many people, is ideology.
Given that consent is needed for rulers to rule and given that our society is more free than others in centuries past might have been, consent is more efficiently manufactured ideologically than it is compelled at the tip of a spear. If people think they’re free because, let’s say, they have more choices in soda or cable channels than ever, they’re apparently more willing ignore facts like that we don’t elect Presidents, have more prisoners than any other nation on earth, have more personal debt, have had our wages frozen for half a century, and are the most surveilled population of people in the world’s history.
Late Monday afternoon I decided to take the route to the hospital to pick my wife up that I’d discovered that morning. When I arrived at the Eastbound turn I’d used to enter the vicinity of downtown this second time around, however, I saw several large trucks from the Streets and Sanitation Department, several police squad cars, and police officers in riot gear parked in the way. They took up most of the street and I initially assumed that they had instituted a full blockade or at least another armed checkpoint.
Not having the necessary papers to show I belonged downtown, according to the city’s guidelines, I turned to find another route. As I did, I noticed that other cars slowly approached the pop-up citadel and then slipped past with permission through a narrow demi-lane. I turned around and followed suit.
The officers and their barricade appeared no less daunting up-close as I approached and slowly passed them in the car, but it was once again all about psychology, about putting some fear in us. The officers here did not even talk to drivers or ask for papers, they simply let them pass through, Eastbound.
To do so, however, we had to slow respectfully as officers watched us, riot helmets on and batons in hand, tapping their legs. We could pass, but they made clear they were ready for action.
I did not like any of this, of course. Still, it is nothing compared to what others have and are facing right now.
In just the past few days friends and family in Chicago have been hit by police officers while demonstrating peacefully, unarmed. They have also had to pull officers off of others they saw being assaulted and even talk down officers who had drawn their firearms and began pointing them at young protesters.
In Philadelphia, mobs of white supremacists march, wielding weapons, threatening violence against the city’s minorities, and the city’s police department pose for photos with them. In Louisville, David McAtee, a Black restaurant owner known for giving free meals to law enforcement officers was murdered by them, then left on the street for 12 hours.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, police sprayed peaceful protesters with pepper spray then shot them in the head. In Washington D.C. kneeling peaceful protesters were shot at by police.
Tear gas, its use during war a literal international war crime, is being used in cities all across the world on unarmed, peaceful protesters. Even the most obedient, well known members of the media are now being shot at by police, hit, and arrested.
So much of the reactionary police violence is being perpetrated by Democratic leaders in supposedly liberal cities. This includes Mayor Lori Lightfoot here in Chicago and Bill de Blasio in New York City, who defended officers who had used squad cars to attempt mass murder on peaceful protesters, and whose own police department union posted insults of de Blasio and his daughter through an official Twitter account, including a photo of what they say is her arrest record.
President Trump is illegally using military troops on civilians inside our border, a violation of federal law under the Posse Comitatus Act. This heinous action, of course, was preceded by President Obama violating the Act first, during his administration, paving the way for Mr. Trump to do so with cover of precedent tacitly approved by the liberal establishment.
In his latest act of theater meant to embolden his fascistic Christian Nationalism base of supporters, President Trump also posed in Hitler-esque strongman fashion holding a Bible up in the air. Opponents of theocracy and authoritarianism everywhere immediately condemned his alarming move.
The Democratic Party leadership, on the other hand, immediately emulated it, as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi grabbed her own Bible and tried to out-Jesus Donald Trump in her own nauseating publicity stunt.
For his part, Senator Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party Presidential nominee, responded to Trump’s calls to shoot protesters, and the rampant police rioting happening across the nation and world by suggesting police officers should be trained to shoot unarmed protesters in the legs instead of the heart.
All of this violence from our government has seemingly bolstered the American financial markets. On Monday the NASDAQ, NYSE, and Dow Jones all saw increases.
Some see that steadiness as a positive, but journalist Naomi Klein took to social media to point out that the markets are, in fact, “reassured by massive displays of state violence against unarmed protesters demanding justice.” The state violence in response to popular uprisings heartens the financial sector, which is likely why the response from government leaders of both parties is materially the same.
The Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of a single corporate party system. As journalist Chris Hedges often says and writes, there is no way in any American election to vote against the interests of, for example, weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and Boeing.
So, both Donald Trump and the once Great Liberal Hope Bill de Blasio deploy and defend murderous police violence. President Trump and the Republican Party call for executions in the streets of protesters by police, and Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party resist that by calling instead for their being maimed.
Indeed, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are far from the same. The GOP wants to murder me, while Democrats only want me wounded.
Politicians like Mr. Trump, Speaker Pelosi, and Mr. Biden earn their money by doing corporations’ bidding. Truth be told, very few politicians — like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — do not.
Yet, even the politicians who do not take corporate money simply back the ones who do. Senator Sanders, for example, refused to take PAC or corporate money during his Presidential campaigns, but just voted for the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history in the form of the CARES Act.
Senator Sanders has fought against racism his entire life, even being arrested for protesting segregation as a young man. Now, he endorses Sen. Biden, an opponent to school integration who authored the New Jim Crow system that has devastated generations of Black families, and who now suggests we deal with racist police violence by teaching them to snipe for the legs instead of kill shots and who repeatedly promises that nothing fundamental will change should he win the presidency.
Where is the material resistance from elected leaders in all this? All this violence, all this tyranny, employed by leaders of both parties, encourages their bosses in the financial sector.
Capital will always be served. We are told to always serve capital.
It is a bipartisan value and mandate. This is why we are not officially allowed downtown right now, unless we can afford to live there or come in through armed checkpoints with our papers held out and our heads bowed.
In effect, there are no political candidates offering an alternative to our current state. That is alarming, to say the least, because we’ve all been taught since youth that the one avenue into political engagement, effecting change, is electoral politics.
Showing papers at armed checkpoints and proving you belong by virtue of either possession of capital or an employee relationship to it is the government approved way of getting into downtown Chicago right now just as voting is the government approved way of supposedly voicing your will. So, what to do when what you want is an end to a for-profit and fundamentally racist carcel system that works hand-in-hand with the burgeoning and authoritarian security state but no one from either party, at any level, promises to end them?
I do not yet have a road map, but I am willing to say ‘no,’ and that will have to be a start. ‘No’ to anything and anyone whose records and plans assure us they will not give what is needed at the immediate time they’re needed.
When the world’s on fire and there is a knee on your neck, there isn’t much time to negotiate incrementally, and anything but refusal in self-defense is a betrayal of dignity and conscience. I don’t yet have a road map, but I know a dead-end when I see one, and armed checkpoints and politicians arguing over where on my body to shoot are dead-ends.
Voting occupies but a small place on the spectrum of political engagement. Never stop engaging politically, but when you’re disheartened by your available voting choices, remembering that there are other, more historically-proven methods of effecting positive change than voting are better options than giving your endorsement to those who do not stand for what you do.
I do not yet know the precise direction to go in, but I look to history and am reminded that there are other routes than voting. I am scared of the armed checkpoints in my city, at how our violent empire has once again returned home, but I know there are still other ways in and out of downtown.
The ruling establishment that we are all sick of still needs us to consent to its rule, to their orders, to their candidacies, to their processes. They still need us to take the paths they approve of.
If you are unsure of your path, consider starting by refusing theirs. Tactics and morality usually mix inexactly, and no plans are foolproof but two things that will likely never change are important to remember: We can always refuse, and there are more of us than there are of them.
