Giving Back to Black Lives Matter: Solidarity Everywhere

by Sasha / Earth First! Newswire

Solidarity brings the gift of mutual aid. When we rise up with one group of oppressed people, we stand up for ourselves. We must rid ourselves of the jealous notion that our protests are somehow more important, more vital, or that solidarity is about them coming to our protests after we go to theirs. All such expectations evaporate in the drought of human inaction.

It was somewhere around 10pm, and I was blocking a highway.

A deep sense of intoxication. Looking behind me, I saw my three friends shambling together between two lanes as traffic backed up. A helicopter loomed overhead. Somebody might have said, “At this point, who cares?” It didn’t matter.About half an hour earlier, my crew was with a group of hundreds of protestors marching from downtown Portland across the Burnside Bridge to the east side, and then blocking I-5. As the riot cops charged, a flood of protestors scrambled for the steps to gain access to the overpass. But more riot cops awaited us at the top. My friends and I found each other, surprised, almost in wonder, in the middle of the bridge returning to downtown.

We ambled slowly across the bridge, talking passionately about music, places we’d been, mutual friends. A cop car drove up a marked-off lane and did a quick U-turn to face us on the other side of the bridge. My friend, who is in jail out of state now for unrelated ecodefense stuff, reassured me, “Don’t worry, they’re probably just blocking the other side in case more protestors come.”

I took one more opportunity to gaze at the stars above before we entered the bright lights and tall buildings of downtown for the second time that night. When we found and rejoined the main body of the protest, it was like rejoining a family. We held the streets all night, despite police snatch-and-grabs that led to the arrests of several comrades.

A few months later—this May Day—I was in the streets staring a similar situation in the eye.

We marched through the streets, blocked bridges, and raised our voices to the air all day. When we ended the march in Pioneer Square, tension began to spread. Suddenly an officer of the law broke through a police line about 10 steps away from me. He was coughing, sputtering, spitting, cussing. His pepper spray had misfired.

I took out my cell phone to see if I could start filming what was going on, and pepper spray spewed forth onto a crowd.

“Water! Water!” Two high school students stumbled onto the sidewalk. One of them already had a bad reaction; his face was completely red, he was shivering uncontrollably on an 80 degree day. I reached in my bag, fumbling between my sandwich, my jar of coffee, and my jar of water to flush this person’s eyes. His friend went off at the cops like a match that just got struck.

“You bastards!” He screamed a stream of expletives with such purity of rage that it impressed me. Some medics arrived with some Maalox and water to continue the flushing, and I moved on to another friend of mine who had also been pepper sprayed.

This went on for about fifteen minutes before the possum truck came and scooped up the riot cops. Protestors followed them down the street, and then we heard the brutal explosions of flashbangs. The same friend returned, pepper sprayed a second time, and told me to get some milk for him. “I’m vegan,” he said, “but now I have to make an exception.”

I returned with the milk into a hazy, chaotic scene as marchers fled the riot cops down the street. An older man called out for a medic, which I am not, but I responded, anyway, to see what he needed. He couldn’t breathe from the pepper spray and a medical condition. I gave him some milk for his eyes, which he consented to, and a couple of medics showed up presently to provide care.

Soon, the police backed off, and protestors took the street. We had time to collect ourselves and assess the damage.

An organizer with Portland Right to the City Coalition, a grassroots political project that wants to run leftist candidates for local elections, was hit by shrapnel from a flashbang. It burned through two layers of thick clothes and seared the flesh off of a square inch of his inner bicep.

Medics asked if he needed a bandage, but he told them he would prefer to air it out.

Even worse, another protester who was in my friend’s crew, was hit in the face with shrapnel. He looked like he had been shot with a shotgun at long range, with bee-bee-sized wounds riddling his face.

After hanging with the Rising Tide contingent, who held their banner fast against the flashbangs and pepperspray, I finally got a chance to eat my sandwich overlooking the crowd as it dissipated. I left feeling somewhat satisfied at having helped some people, and having helped take the street, but also embittered at the police brutality put on display.

Within days, the standard liberal condemnation of anarchists emerged, insisting that agitators are creating situations where innocent people get pepper sprayed. I’m not going to lie and say that there’s never any beef, but I really wish these inane and baseless criticisms that are so counterproductive could be kept within our circles and figured out in a strategic way, rather than creating a friends-and-enemies situation on the ground when we should be in solidarity.

You can get a sense for the reasons of our solidarity when you recognize the forces that lurk behind the police shield during every march like this: really the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Joint Terrorism Taskforce. The struggle against the police state is a united struggle against what restricts our freedom.

I can’t say it better than Leda Rafanelli, “A true Anarchist does not get caught up in petty arguments with fellow compagni, she understands that rebels must be united by their Ideas as in a free community built upon thought and struggle. There is only one objective: to fight against everything that creates poverty and evil, the giant lie of the society we live in. And our enemies are well-organized, they support each other, protecting and defending themselves to hide their crimes and their lies. Yet we—a new Humanity—continue to struggle and keep our resistance alive with all of our means, actions, and thoughts. From Harmodius to Bresci, to Armand, to the most obscure compagno.”

To that list of proud anarchists, we should add those honored by our own contemporary movement, from Oscar Grant to Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown to Freddie Gray. Just like we stand in solidarity to those forced to migrate from their homelands and disappeared into the jaws of the US security complex, we march for the trans people cut down through constant shaming, harassment, suicide, and murder. We do not need a single issue to push us forward, we will always have the backs of the oppressed against the Mens Rights activists, Tea Party disruptors, and fascist co-opters, recognizing the intersections of liberation that propel us towards unity and solidarity forever.

Mutual aid brings a gift—the gift of solidarity. The best way of giving back to the Black Lives Matter movement for all it has brought to the table, totally changing the scene of US political life, is by following up with our end of the struggle. That means opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership, stopping Nestle from privatizing our water, and halting fossil fuel infrastructure, among other things. When we can make sure that everybody has fresh air and clean water, we can also talk about those sustainable communities that our mutual aid has build, and how our food systems have transformed to sharing local production.

One recent project I’m involved in is helping facilitate food and other kinds of assistance from Food Not Bombs to a Breakfast Program that some activists with Black Lives Matter and the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party for youths of a predominantly black neighborhood. These are the kinds of bonds that are allowing an exchange of trust and values of meeting basic needs in happy, healthy, and sustainable ways. The police state is the shield that all too often blocks this path to freedom.

We want to transform this grey world into a thriving, flourishing place for all people to live and love together. No matter how much we respect, encourage, or help our comrades who seek to engage in the political fight and make reforms that matter, there is no demand that can sum up our revolutionary dreams. We are not a vanguard. We are everywhere.