@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Nearly 50 years ago I was walking home one dark night in Vancouver BC 🇨🇦 when a patrol car stopped and two police jumped out. My hair was long for the time but otherwise nothing remarkable about this white college student. 1/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm It was common at the time to stop & frisk, looking for drugs, which I never carried. This the two officers did. I could have asked them to stop, and arrest me if they believed they had grounds, but I was 20 at the time and lacked confidence, and it was a busy time. 2/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm I was studying politics and history. When these two cops rifled my book bag they found a mini-library on contemporary communist states. Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (iirc). Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 3/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm I would have had course notes and maybe an alt-press mag or two. One of the cops dug out a volume of E.H. Carr’s trilogy, The Bolshevik Revolution. “What’s your revolution?” he asked, obviously not wanting an answer. I’ll never forget the Other-smear in his bullying cadence. 4/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Vancouver is a steaming kettle of oppositional politics. At the time of my encounter with these uniformed brutes, agitation was intense on several fronts: poverty, unemployment, police harassment of young people, campaigns for women’s, Indigenous and environmental rights. 5/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Two black social workers were among the community leaders pushing the boundaries of resistance. Rosemary Brown became one of Canada’s best-known human-rights defenders. She and Emery Barnes, a former pro football player, were elected to the provincial legislature in 1972. 6/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm I recount this story on the far margins of an ephemeral platform, without meaning to steal space from those at the core of resistance to racism or to claim any kind of resistance. I’ve been gut-scared more than once since that Vancouver night, but always ... 7/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm ... always because of where I was, never because of who I was. I’ve had my white skin thrown in my face, but I’ve never been terrified of showing my face. My beliefs and actions have kept some doors closed, but I’ve been able to breach walls and help people get into rooms. 8/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Sometimes, when I feel a cold fury driving a piece of resistance writing - a pitiless explication of life in a body perceived as hostile, for example - my mind turns to that night in Vancouver, when two ill-trained constables tried to show a shaggy student who was boss. 9/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm I think about what it must be like to see raw power stand above you and watch it sear your Otherness and its distance from you into your memory and the history of that moment, of many moments, run together into years of separation from power & the keys to a flourishing life. 10/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm We give police the exclusive right to use force against other people in pursuit of public safety. But we do so embedded in a flawed society made up of flawed people. We can't allow that power to be exercised without a code of justice, without effective oversight, without ... 11/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm ... an enforceable understanding that abuses of power will be investigated quickly and independently, with appropriate consequences & no special procedural exits or detours. Effective policing requires public trust. In policing above all, justice must be swift & transparent. 12/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Structural racism takes many forms, but the issue right now is policing, its purpose, its scope, its methods, its personnel, its needs, its governance and most of the boundaries we draw around its exclusive power to use force. 13/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Police forces are creatures of societies. They’re subject to alteration through the democratic exercise of popular will. This can happen; it has happened. In Canada, we must keep the focus on large urban forces and the RCMP, while not neglecting smaller & specialized units. 14/x
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm I doubt Vancouver police are taunting long-haired students about revolution any more. But how many black Canadians trust the cops to keep them safe? My police moment was a grain of sand, but these days of anger can become months and years of action. Let us determine how. 15/15
@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm @threadreaderapp unroll pls tx
