Report on A Disruption in Lacey, WA and Thoughts on the Struggle to Come

Report originally posted to Puget Sound Anarchists on recent disruption and demonstration against “Cop City” facility in Lacey, Washington.

On Monday, February 5th the City of Lacey was holding a ground breaking ceremony to mark the beginning of construction for their new $43 million dollar police station and regional training facility.

On fairly short notice, around 50 people came through and shut it down pretty quickly. People were really energetic and brave and various chants rang out – “No Cops, No Prisons, Total Abolition!,” “LPD, IDF, KKK They’re All The Same!” and two highlighting the connection with police militarization nation wide – “Stop Cop City!” & “Viva! Viva! Tortuguita!”

People very quickly bypassed the few cops around who seemed totally unprepared – totally surrounding a few of them which other cops fearfully noticed and moved in to get them out of there – and got right into the area as they were trying to make their opening speeches, totally drowned out by chanting and noise makers. The exasperated attendees quickly called it and packed it in and we took the time to individually tell them all that they should kill themselves – a lively “Kill Your Selves!” chant even broke out in the direction of the police.

It was a quick and easy victory – a limited one though as they simply moved their ceremony inside but a victory none the less. On our way out the glass window on the excavator spontaneously broke in solidarity with us.

As of right now there have been no arrests.

On The Facility and What’s At Stake

The $43.7 million police facility is a multi story 48,601 square foot facility that will bulldoze a woodland to be built. It will include a two story police station for Lacey Police, a “community space” which will feature a multi-purpose Emergency Operations Center, and a training center with an 8 lane firing range, armory and gun cleaning facility, simulator and defense tactics training room and a general purpose training room. It’s designed with the intention of being used by regional police forces.

The current contractor for construction is Olympia based Forma Construction.

The iron grip of policing has been closing in for years. New pushes for recruits, funding at historic highs, new surveillance rolling out everywhere, armed private corporate security popping up in more and more places, jail and prison overhauls, cops in schools, cops everywhere. Society is militarizing rapidly and an untouchable political warrior caste is in control supported by a population of pearl clutchers scared of their own shadows cheer-leading for blood.

Whats at stake here isn’t about a single facility but the face of policing in the region and the monsters it will produces and demand we all become accomplice to. The social crises which surround us have no solution other than the destruction of their world. They know – the cops, the business owners, the landed classes – benefit from it. They know that for someone to have power, others have to be forced to submit to that power. For people, businesses, cities, economies to be rich, others have to be made poor. Look around all the richest cities and you will find hundreds and thousands of people in growing homeless camps and thousands more struggling struggling to hold on to make their economy run, to pave their white washed, cookie cutter streets with gold…and our blood.

The police can read the writing on the wall. Can we? Can we decipher the possibilities? Can we turn the social fault lines into trenches that explode the entirety of civil society once and for all?

Negate the ZAD, Negate Stop Cop City – Affirm the New Struggles to Come

There’s a danger that lurks in trying to one-for-one copy and paste a struggle from a different context onto our own. There are parallels and important connections to be made and lessons to be learned. People chanted and brought signs that read “Stop Cop City” but this isn’t Atlanta, this isn’t cop city. People yelled at the cops that they killed Tortuguita but they didn’t, we have our own names of people local pigs have killed or tried to kill – Timothy Green, Vaneesa Hopson, Michael Reinoehl, Andre and Bryson.

No, this isn’t Atlanta. This is Lacey Washington, in Thurston County with different police departments, a different political class, a different history, a different terrain. A different struggle.

This isn’t a Cop City – it’s a new police department and training facility but it’s not a mock city for training in urban warfare like the Atlanta facility. We don’t need it to be, we oppose it on the grounds that it’s an expansion of police infrastructure, that its going to be a multi-agency regional training center to standardize police training, that it’s continuing the regional trend of destroying all the surrounding woodlands for development.

Atlanta, as inspiring as it has been and continues to be, is looking grim. The forest defenders are long evicted, the trees continue to be cut, construction has begun. Our situation is worse as we are starting the fight with construction and deforestation beginning.

We must abandon all models and study our possibilities.

So Where do We go From Here?

Well, a lot of people don’t even know what the fuck is going on, so that’s a place to start. Flyers and posters, informational events, tabling, public meetings, etc.

And of course, determined action. There’s no legislative solution to this, the project is underway already. Unless mass – and we mean many hundreds of people – demonstrations come to every day disrupt work there will be no peaceful or more-or-less peaceful solution. Sporadic acts of night time sabotage will set them back but they’ll keep going.

There are a few paths we can see here, and they all involve a broad view of the struggle – not becoming single issue activists for this one piece of policing but connecting and striking at all of it and connecting it to all the other struggles that effect our lives.

Putting current police infrastructure out of commission – security cameras and towers, vehicles, current training facilities and police station, contractors and funders, manufacturers of police equipment?

Exacting economic tolls on all contractors and heavy machinery regardless of affiliation with the project to A) up general insurance costs across the industry and B) make sure no contractor wants to touch this project.

Research also needs to be done on key individuals involved – from city, police, investors, contractors, workers, insurance agents, anyone and everyone – and where they live.

Anti-police agitation needs to be constantly done, not just around this project but in general. Keeping track of and disrupting all of their PR stunts. Coming into the neighborhoods and workplaces.

If the cost is high and the potential future if they build this is bleak and terrifying then the response should be high. We’ll leave it to crews to ruminate on this and what it could mean.

No New Police Station!
No Old Police Station!
The Future Belongs to the Daring!
Long Live Anarchy!