Oakland: ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Flag Destroyed In Solidarity with July 10th Call-Out

Submitted to It’s Going Down

On July 10th, we found and destroyed a ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag that was placed in a public place in the bay area of California; a reactionary response to the growing surge of popular power and resistance happening on the streets of the US and the world. We did this in connection with the call-out for actions in solidarity with the anti-fascist shutdown in Sacramento on June 26th which left several brave comrades with serious injuries. The struggle against fascism and white supremacy is also a struggle against the forces that uphold that system; a reality most crystallized by the existence and increasing militarization of the police themselves. The police whether here in the US or in Oaxaca, Mexico, are not a force that “keeps us safe,” but instead an occupying army which upholds the right of property for the rich and the divisions of wealth and racial apartheid.

In the few weeks that have passed since the shut-down in Sacramento, the far-Right has pushed more and more to become an auxiliary force in service of the capitalist State. A Trump supporter in Portland pulled a gun out on a Black Lives Matter demonstration. In Phoenix, members of the far-Right 3%er militia showed up to help the police contain the crowd fully armed. In Olympia, demonstrators again had to run out pro-police Neo-Nazis from the streets. White nationalist blowhards and keyboard warriors also have taken to the radio and their podcasts to offer up support for the police as so many take to the streets. Meanwhile, everywhere the police conduct a counter-insurgency campaign aimed at White America where they claim they are “under attack,” despite murdering over 3 people per day.

These actions show that the far-Right; whatever segment of the movement that they occupy, is out in support of not everyday white people but instead whiteness itself. These groups do not want to challenge or combat a system of power, profit, and domination, but instead create an even more hierarchical, stratified, and authoritarian system that is the fascistic extension of this one in order to preserve white supremacy.

Poor and working-class white people must reject and confront these groups, the police, and the state system they protect en masse. It is time for us to pick a side. We currently live under a government that employs, trains, and militarizes a police force that has already killed close to 575 people in 2016 alone.

The anti-fascist struggle is just one aspect of a larger movement aimed at the overthrow of capitalism and the governments that manage it. Anarchism and autonomous anti-capitalists are building, organizing, and fighting for a world built from the bottom up, where human labor goes towards needs not profits. Where we live sustainably with the land, to exploit it. Where power is shared horizontally in self-governing communities, not dictated from the top down. Where we leave to the dustbin of history these imposed caste systems of race, gender, and sexuality forever and discover our common humanity and ability to grow, learn, create, and build in a world in common.