Thread by @JesseDangrsly

At times during the weeks that i watched people suffering in centretown, i had ugly punitive impulses connected to my frustration that no institution capable of mitigating that suffering was taking action. It was, and remains, easy to compare it to swift & brutal suppression of

…demonstrations I've known to be less disruptive, less shot through with extremism, less against the Geneva Convention. So i may not have quite crystallized the thought "i wish these assholes would get gassed and beaten the way people i admire do when seeking justice," but i get

…the emotional logic that leads there. I prefer to trace it backwards, to remind myself that what i want to see is no police violence.

As much as i see myself as an abolitionist in my ideals, i don't know of an instrument besides state institutions that could interfere with the

gathered mass terrorizing the people who live and work in centretown. I'm not the type of anarchist who pretends we're already in the next paradigm. What the institutions do is significant, & thinking police are a bad thing doesn't mean they don't occupy the necessary role here.

i say that to say, i wanted them to act. I wanted them to interfere with the entrenchment and the harassment, even though i know it aligns more with their collective values than it conflicts.

And I felt relief when the switch was flipped and they were Doing Something finally.

But what I can't relate to, outside of a side of myself i don't think is constituent to my better nature, is the THIRST for police violence I'm seeing from other people who otherwise very much share my perspective on this.

When i see cops punching a prone person, I see Montsion.

I don't have much beyond very superficial compassion for the occupiers. I'm seeking to deepen it for practical reasons, to keep it in line with my beliefs. I can't be like "no one is disposable, people aren't good or bad, no more prisons" and also "i hope a cop breaks your ribs."

I mean, I would forgive a centretown resident for killing someone from the roving anti mask posses, or blowing up the train horn; but that's not how i form my expectations of institutions.

Now, even as the crackdown manifests, it's the politest and gentlest one I've ever seen.

And while i yearn in my soul for it to be the gold standard for corrupt racist institutional response to civil disruption, there are moments that are too violent (these guys LOVE to do a beating, they just usually reserve it for Black & First Nations people who are not a threat).

and i don't relish those. i can't relate to the people cheering those moments on the loudest, asking for water hoses to come out, saying it's not enough punishment.

The amount of punishment that is appropriate from police even by their own justifying philosophy is none at all.

I guess we're raised on flat media in which villain is an all-encompassing identity rather than a role in a specific conflict from a specific vantage. They're effigies for us to wish harm upon, and usually a movie will promise & provide us the catharsis of their painful death.

I don't know if that reflects the values of my generation or created them, but i think i see it welded into the supporting beams of how so many people similar to me wind up replicating the drive for punishment that is the main thing that makes the cops and courts net antisocial.

We want a final haymaker at the end of the movie so the villain falls into the swimming pool or wedding cake or coursing lava and is obliterated once and for all by either humiliation or painful death. They could also get fatally impaled on something, there's options.

So we're programmed to want that. We are also flawed. We are also hypocritical & messy & cruel & kind & redeemable.

But when we go yeah, give them what you gave us! Give them what they would give others! Give them the pain that they deserve…

…we fuckin suck in those moments.

In conclusion, fuck the fuckin #FreedomConvoy2022. Fuck the right wing white supremacist grifters who whipped it up and profiteered from it, fuck the useful pawns who came with their versions of the best of intentions but provided cover for a siege, fuck their donors, fuck their

…apologists both sincere & cynical. Fuck the cops who refused to mitigate the harm & menace; fuck the cops who eventually got excited to do some harm of their own. Fuck those of us who lost ourselves in the hate & fear in which we are justified.

Fuck so much about all of this.

There. That exorcised my swirling thoughts. Fuck my swirling thoughts.

Much love and safety to everyone everywhere. You don't have to be a cop in your life. I'm trying to unlearn my false need to control everyone & still seek justice. Open to tips on that. Thanks for reading. ❤️

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