"Fuck tha Police" and mineral water

Bulletin Resistons Ensemble (credo, roughly, community "self organisation" against police violence), with commentary about the UK riots.

RESISTONS ENSEMBLE / bulletin number 100 / September 2011

“Fuck tha Police” and mineral water

There’s one who took a bottle of mineral water, another a packet of crisps or a smartphone, yet another who tagged “fuck tha police” somewhere, others who shouted about the dealers profiting from their revolt… It wasn’t clear-cut, wasn’t pure. There was no ten-point programme, no parties or committees, no leaders, or even a coordination. It was a tsunami of young people, unexpected, powerful, which has swept through the UK during the days following the murder, on 4 August, of Mark Duggan, 29 years old, of Caribbean origin, by the London police. For several days the crowds took aim at the politicians, the state, the police… There was one who said: “I’ve finally got something to say to my kids”, another added “We haven’t done anything special, we’ve just been able to act for ourselves”. Clearly, the significance wasn’t missed – “scum”, “savages”, “criminal under-class”, “consumerists”, “confused”, “divisives”, “not clearly anticapitalist”… The media, the authorities, the parties have denounced them. Dumbfounded and trembling. Oh, what ecstasies the same people can go into over the beauty of the Arab revolutions, those “brave peaceful people” who overthrow the rather too compromised tyrants… on condition that they know how to stop in time and are content with establishing a Western Democracy, a dictatorship in make-up by L’Oréal. But when in Tunisia, in Egypt they begin to attack the police, the army, commodities, then, well, no excesses, if you please! Then when in the UK, at the heart of the system, where a dictatorship is lacking, part of the people, the most oppressed, exploited, victims of racism, in brief the salt of the earth, dare to lay hands on the two pillars of “democratic” capitalism, the police and private property, there is class hatred. British justice understands very well that the important thing is not the theft of an mp3 player or a flat screen, but the fact of having dared to revolt together, spontaneously, of having hit the symbols of the system. As did the young man who was given 6 months for stealing a pack of water (!). And here in France ? It’s not so good any more. Level of solidarity near zero. Like in 2005. It’s the fashion that when there are no elections, there is “indignation”. On 14 July this year, during the march of the “indignant” Parisians, neighbourhood youth carrying the banner - “Poor neighbourhoods – police crimes, discrimination, unemployment - enough!” – were asked, in vain, to leave the front of the demo. It was “spoiling” the indignation, it was “too political”. What sort of politics is that?