Campaign to Demilitarize the Police

Text of a speech delivered by Frank Morales last night in New York City

Demilitarize the Police -November, 12, 2003

Welcome to the inaugural meeting of an autonomous campaign to demilitarize the police. For us the goal of demilitarizing the police is a strategic and necessary one in the process of widening and extending the democratic space within which dissent can thrive. If "dissent is the highest form of patriotism” as Jefferson said, then the defense of our right to dissent is equally praiseworthy. What we are defending is our right not to be violated in our dissent.

Simply, we can no longer sit idly by and allow for the increasing repression of protest in America, for the increasing level of violence directed against each and every one of us. Our right to dissent can only be secured through dissent, and organization and effective intervention. Through an ongoing, autonomous movement to demilitarize the police, or more specifically, militarized police response to protest, we can and will preempt their ability to preempt us.

By the militarization of law enforcement we mean the operational, technological and ideological transformation of police work into domestic military operations, and for our purposes, those tied directly to state efforts to repress and suppress protest. In America, this effort is coordinated by the U.S. Army’s Garden Plot operation, or the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2 (code named Garden Plot). This roughly 200 page document details Pentagon tactics, techniques and procedures designed for U.S. Army Field Manual 19-15, subsumed under “operations other than war” doctrine, is now being consolidated into the Northern Command, the recently commissioned domestic Pentagon command, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The creation of militarized SWAT (special weapons and tactics) cops back in the late sixties grew out of west coast uprisings and subsequent “civil disorder management” courses taught by Louis Giuffrida, out of Army Combat Command, at the California Specialized Training Institute. In our day the National Interagency Civil and Military Institute (along with CSTI) carry on this work, the work of counterinsurgency, which today masks as counter-terrorism. The creation of the Pentagon’s Northern Command, a domestic military command, which celebrated its one year anniversary this past October, whose duty it is to “assist law enforcement" in America, is the unheralded intent of “homeland defense”, which is to militarize the context within which protest takes place, to more effectively preempt and suppress it. Demilitarizing the police in America is the antidote to Pentagon Inc. directed counterinsurgency on the homefront.

Continued.

If we, in the peace, justice and liberation movements expect to succeed in our efforts, we cannot allow for the increasingly illegal, repressive and brutal suppression of our right to dissent from the pathological Bush agenda to continue. We must be active, pro-active, preemptive between protests to insure our ability to protest. In this sense, then, we must realize the seemingly impossible. We must demilitarize the police.

Now, it won’t be easy. The sadistic Bush cabal is fully cognizant that its global plunder necessitates a war at home, a war against dissent, waged by a militarized police and spy apparatus. Under the recently realized Pentagon doctrine of Operations Other Than War, and the recent publication of a U.S. military Domestic Operations Manual by the Center for Law and Military Operations, the war makers have come up (or so they think) with fanciful rationalizations and preparations for military operations against the American people, particularly those that disagree with the apocalyptic Bush new world law and order agenda.

Now the process has been going on for quite some time. And it can be delineated: The sixties, the formation (along with massive federal financing) of SWAT and the creation of police paramilitary units around the country (one thousand of them presently), the politicization of law enforcement and the spying on the dissenting public (uncovered in part during the mid-seventies Church Committee hearings), the Military Cooperation With Law Enforcement Act, during Reagan and other 1980s congressional edicts sanctioning the involvement of military expertise in the first war on terror, the so-called drug war, legislated “exceptions” to the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA), the criminal statute which bars the military from enforcing laws domestically, technology transfer agreements between the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice under Clinton, the proliferation of so-called non-lethal weapons, designed for use against non-combatants, civilians, for the suppression of dissent, the imminent repeal of the PCA, which is presently under “review” by the Bush gang. And with the proliferation of TV brainwash, JAG, etc., the SWAT film, the subjective factor, the pieces are in place for the complete consolidation of the military and police function within America, designed for social control.

Our campaign aims to sever the link between the police and military function within this country, to stop the Pentagon’s domestic war on dissent. We hope to do so by organizing ourselves into an active, autonomous and practical intervention into this process through the delineation of targets (accomplices in the process), the utilization of a diversity of tactics, public outreach and education, and ongoing communication among our movement through a central website (temporary website address is on flyer).

I know that for some of you these concerns may be new, so let me give you an example of the kind of thing we might do. We know that the Bush crew is scheduled to come to NYC this coming August for the Republican National Convention. We know there will be major protest at that time. Towards that end, we are intent on lessening the violence that is directed against the people’s movement. One thing we might do is to insure that certain weapons are not available to the police to use against us, such as CS and CN gas, flash bang grenades, rubber bullets and the like.

How to do this? That’s why we’re here. Identify the stockpiles, amass and consolidate legal and public opinion, medical research, initiate strategic actions, etc., with the goal of disarming the police of these weapons prior to the demo. In other words, the state will only be non-violent to the extent that we force it to be so...Let’s get to work!

Frank Morales, November, 12, 2003, St. Mark’s, New York City.

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printed from Campaign to Demilitarize the Police on 2004-06-03 15:55:47