The fate of the Russian economy in 2015 and the possible repercussions from a continued rapid diminution in the international exchange value of the ruble on domestic political stability in the Russian Federation remain open questions. Significantly, it appears improbable, in the near term, that existing levels of shale oil production from already operational North American wells is going to abate in any way that will place upward pressure on global commodity prices for crude oil. With the fracturing of OPEC unity on limiting output levels to increase prices and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states committed to high levels of production in order to maintain market shares, it is likely that daily crude oil prices will remain below $70 per barrel in major commodity markets for at least another three months and perhaps longer. Moreover, given the continued effect of U.S. and European economic sanctions in response to Russian involvement in Ukraine, neither the Russian government nor financial sector firms possess ready access to Western monetary capital resources. Under these circumstances, Russia will experience a significant contraction of economic activity and a substantial price inflation as the ruble's value continues to disintegrate.
Several conclusions from the present Russian economic trajectory appear somewhat clear:
1. Russian governmental and monetary authorities are incapable of alleviating the current foreign exchange market stress on the ruble in the absence of an appreciation in crude oil prices: The source of the current economic crisis is intimately related to the present dive in crude oil prices, which is exaccerbating the effects of punitive U.S. and European capital market restrictions against Russia. Neither Russian Central Bank President Elvira Nabiullina nor Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov possess effective policy tools to contest the global supply glut in crude oil markets arising from the combined impact of increased North American shale oil production and rising output from the Gulf states. The most that Russian monetary authorities can accomplish through utilization of domestic monetary tools is to sharply increase interest rates in an effort to stave off conversion of rubles into foreign currency and protect the Russian banking system. So far, efforts in this direction appear to have been only moderately effective in preventing the extraction of funds from Russian banks and capital flight. As ruble-denominated assets become increasingly illiquid, the financial system will continue to bleed capital at an accelerating rate. Ultimately, the prime lever in determining the fate of the Russian financial system will be the relationship between global pricing of crude oil and the production price of North American shale oil, as the control mechanism for new investments in shale oil production capacity. This relationship can only manifest a long term effect, however. In the immediate future, Russian monetary and financial authorities will continue to manage the negative effects of depressed oil prices without an adequate means of stabilizing the value of the ruble.
2. The Russian economy is too rigidly dependent on extractive revenues from petroleum and other natural resources - in the aftermath of the current crisis, efforts must be made to diversify domestic production in order to generate the capacity for a more diversified export portfolio, driven by a more diverse, flexible, and entrepreneurial private sector.
A portrait of Russia's export portfolio to the world demonstrates the depth of the pain that its economy is currently enduring with a decline in crude oil prices. Crude oil constituted precisely thirty-three percent of Russian exports in 2013 and the combination of crude oil, refined pretroleum products, and gaseous hydrocarbons/natural gas constituted sixty-eight percent of Russian exports for the same year (see United Nations, International Merchandise Trade Statistics, Yearbook 2013: Russian Federation, at: http://comtrade.un.org/pb/FileFetch.aspx?docID=5347&type=country pages). Emphatically, the Russian economy is very highly dependent on exports of petroleum products and especially dependent on the sale of unrefined petroleum in ways that make the economy hyper-sensitive to price fluctuations in global petroleum markets. Moreover, the remainder of Russia's export portfolio is dominated by extracted raw and minimally processed minerals, including raw aluminum, pig iron, and raw nickle (see Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), "Learn More About Trade in Russia," at: http://atlas.media.mit.edu/profile/country/rus/). Each of these commodity markets is liable to exhibit sensitivities to global macroeconomic fluctuations, impacting their uses in progressive stages of manufacturing operations. In particular, the recent slowdown in Chinese manufacturing is likely to produce a constriction in demand for a range of Russian extractive commodity inputs, generating a decline in economic activitiy partly independent of the effects of negative fluctuations in petroleum markets. Such patterns reinforce the larger problems inherent in the evolution of the Russian economy since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The rapid privatization of highly centralized state capitalist enterprises and their subsequent consolidation into the hands of a small number of oligopolistic private capitalist firms in the extractive sectors, intimately tied to state agencies and oligarchic administrative patrons, promoted particular patterns of specialization, driven by global market pricing, to the detriment of a broader diversification of productive activities for export markets.
Approaching the transformation of the Russian economy in the aftermath of the Soviet system as an overdeterminist, I have to concede that it might have been difficult for other outcomes to have obtained in the absence of some significant foreign intervention in the political transition to electoral democracy (i.e. support for the development of a legitimate multi-party, pluralist democratic model) and capital investment in non-extractive manufacturing and services. In point of fact, the radically deregulated, market orientation of the economic transition in post-Soviet Russia, combined with the stiffling of political democracy as ethnic Russian nationalists like Putin moved to crush incipient drives for autonomy by non-Russian minorities, enabled olipolistic firms dominating the extractive sectors to steer the economy's development into a course wholly consistent with the frozen logic of Ricardian comparative advantage. In the end, high level private sector players and political oligarchs alike tied their hopes to the continued appreciation of petroleum prices on global markets, and they now suffer a fate driven by the rapid course of technological change (i.e. hydraulic fracturing) that they could not otherwise have foreseen.
In the near term, high-level domestic stakeholders in Russian economic health will continue to frantically hope for a leveling off of global crude oil supplies to drive price increases and restore petroleum revenues, even as Russian suppliers produce and market every last drop of oil that they can produce at maximized output capacity. What else can they do but keep digging their own graves? In the long run, the commodity market events of the last two months make it clear that the Russian economy needs to gradually restructure itself from the ground up to accentuate production across a range of diverse markets for goods and services destined for domestic consumption, by smaller, more nimble, flexible, and entrepreneurial firms. In the process, maybe some such producers will, over a prolonged gestation period, accumulate the expertise in production and marketing savy necessary to enter export markets with a more diverse range of higher stage commodities and, as such, elevate Russia's stature as a legitimate home for an active, advanced, innovative, and fully integrated base for domestic demand and export-driven growth. Meanwhile, maybe an incipient strata of free-thinking, entrepreneurial, and outward looking Russian economic players can collectively steer the government of the Russian Federation away from its seemingly endless, militarized inward orientation, transfixed on the domination of Eurasia and the reconstruction/reconstitution of Russian imperial space.
3. The Russian government is investing too heavily in defense spending, by virtue of United Russia's aggressive policies against internal ethnic and sectarian minorities (e.g. Muslim ethnic groups in the North Caucasus) and its muscular interventions in neighboring states (e.g. Georgian South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Crimea, Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk) - the government needs to reduce defense expenditures and invest more heavily in non-defense infrastructures, education, and other areas more amenable to long term economic growth.
This conclusion is not entirely original: Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has been making this argument at least since early autumn of 2014 (see Lidia Kelly, "Finance minister warns Russia can't afford military spending plan," Reuters News Agency (7 Oct. 2014), at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/us-russia-economy-spending-defence-idUSKCN0HW1H420141007). Under pre-existing plans for a thorough upgrading of Russian military technologies, the Russian Federation apparently had planned to budget 23 trillion rubles through 2020 for military spending. Under present circumstances, with the collapse of the value of the ruble in international exchange markets and restrictions on the export of technologies to Russian military contractors in response to Russian involvement in eastern Ukraine, it appears improbable that such a scheduled upgrading will take place in the absence of a major reconfiguration of other governmental budget priorities. In other words, aggressive military spending will only come at the expense of virtually every other domestic line item in the budget of the Russian Federation.
Taking for granted that the capacity of the Russian Federation to make significant military investments is being presently compromised, it is still worth asking why such military upgrades might be deemed essential within the Kremlin - what is at stake in the current vision of Russia's place in the world, focused critically on the country's military prowess? In my view, we are witnessing the final breakdown of a political culture with its roots in pre-Romanov Tsarist Russia and the struggle to expand Muscovite hegemony across an expanding geographic sphere against diverse non-Russian Eurasian ethnic groups, most critically Muslim "Tatars" of various ethnic and linguistic origins. As an historical matter, non-Russians (i.e. non-Muscovites) are not, at least from the time of Ivan "the Terrible" in the late Sixteenth century, incorporated as coequal subjects under the domination of the Muscovite tyranny. This pattern of ethnic and sectarian exclusion, not palpably challenged within the Soviet period beyond the first decade of Bolshevik rule, sets up an insurmountable ideology of managing ethnic differences through "Russification." That is to say, Russians have spread across Eurasian space, in turn disseminating both language and cultural norms, supported by military supremacy over outlying ethnic groups. This internal pattern, enforcing the need for the military supremacy of the Russian state against subjected ethnic groupings, compounds Russia's ongoing antagonism with the West, with the Europe of the Enlightenment, the egalitarian humanism and liberties of the French Revolution, and the march of free market capitalism in the advanced industrial economies of Western Europe. Emphatically, Russia's military strength counteracts its perceived economic backwardness, its latent cultural hyper-conservatism, and its adamant embrace of political autocracy against the potential chaos of a robust democracy.
At this point, the Russian Federation appears to have little choice - it will embark on a reduction of its military expenditures and withdraw from certain of its current military commitments or it will face a potential default on its international financial obligations at a time in which its avenues for financing current expenditures of the state are being constricted in response to its overly aggressive relations with certain of its neighbors.
4. A reconfiguration of Russian governmental spending will necessarily involve a transformation in domestic policies toward insurgent movements within the Russian Federation and toward neighboring former Soviet states - emphatically, United Russia's vision of a militarily muscular Russian hegemony over Eurasia has to meet its demise.
With the economic facts on the ground in mind, we need to resituate Russia's role, as the preeminent military power in Eurasia, against the reality that Russia cannot, at present, afford financially to play policeman against its neighbors when the grandiose visions of Putin and United Russia for a return to empire get violated by the autonomous visions of Chechens, Dagestanis, Georgians, or Ukrainians for a future liberated of domination from the Kremlin. Most significantly, a liberatory window is opening for non-Russians within the boundaries of the Russian Federation that may not remain perpetually open. If the Chechens, Dagestani, and Ingush in the Northern Caucasus could ever succeed in breaking free from Putin's grip, now is probably the time for these Muslim minorities to aggressively act. To be clear, the collapse of global crude oil prices may signal the start of a brutal new war for control of the North Caucasus, pitting Sunni Muslims from the region and from multifarious other places against the military forces of the Russian Federation and their pro-Russian Orthodox neighbors (e.g. the Ossetians). If this occurs, moreover, it seems likely that Putin will be forced to take his foot off Kiev's throat in the struggle for Donetsk and Lugansk, though probably will not alter the situation with Crimea. Emphatically, the capacity of the Russian Federation to maintain control within its present military investments is being critically compromised by the degeneration of Russia's fiscal capacity.
Against this situation, the U.S. and EU need to tread exceptionally carefully to ensure that the Russia's military position, particularly in its struggle against militant Salafist movements in the Caucasus, is not so damaged to the point that Western security is, simultaneously, threatened. On the one hand, NATO must rigorously enforce its defense commitments to the Eastern European and Baltic states that now count themselves as coequal members - as the Russian Federation loses its grip on internal political stability, its neighbors need to be insulated as much as possible from efforts by Russia to lash out against neighboring independent sovereign states. On the other hand, NATO cannot intervene militarily to either hasten or forestall the breakup of the Russian Federation. However, it is certain that the process through which the current Russian Federation is transformed will have ongoing repercussions for the EU and the U.S. It might be in the long term best interests of Sunni Muslim populations in the North Caucasus region to achieve greater autonomy if not full blown sovereignty (i.e. secession from the Russian Federation), but, if such a transformation comes through a war against Putin's government, drawing in multifarious foreign Salafist forces under the aegis of Al Qaeda or, now, the Islamic State, then the long term interests of the U.S. and EU in the maintenance of peace in the Caucasus and the neutralization of sources for the growth of militant Salafism internationally will be impacted. Succinctly, it is in the long term interests of the West to disarm the current context in the North Caucasus of a standoff between dogmatic Russian nationalists and militant Salafist Sunni Muslims. It may be too late to avoid the confrontation that will be coming to this region and to Russia as a whole, but we need, as much as possible, to persue a middle ground and seek to restore peace to the region and procure autonomy for non-Russian groups to the exclusion of Islamist militants (again, assuming and hoping that such an outcome is still possible).
In these terms, the West will need to manage a breakdown of the current Russian Federation through tactful diplomacy and craftsmanship in the selective introduction and lifting of economic sanctions and trade/capitalization agreements. Such a task can only be conceived as a long term initiative, framing Western strategies in confrontation with the Russian Federation and pursuing a deepening democratization of Russian constitutional institutions and a thoroughgoing mass liberalization in Russian culture. Perhaps we will know that such a reframing of Western relations with Russian has borne fruit if at some point, say fifty years from now, we will no longer conceive of how the government of Russia could ever have been ruled over by someone like Putin.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Normalizing Relations with Cuba and the American Politics of Anti-Communist Retributions
This topic should be right up my alley, as an American Marxist at least ostensibly in solidarity with the government of Cuba. In fact, I am quite pleased with the idea of normalizing diplomatic relations and with the prospects of ending the embargo against Cuba, and I am simultaneously hopeful that Cuba will undertake a rethinking of its political structures, not to undermine the government's substantial efforts to enhance the quality of life of its citizens but to open up the larger direction of the government and its policy mechanisms to a wider spectrum within the Cuban polity. Succinctly, as a Western Marxist, indebted to a long tradition in the development of civic republican thinking, I think that Cuba needs to more forcefully democratize itself so that its citizens who have indisputably benefited from the socialist revolution will be able, through their personal involvement, to take ownership of the products of the revolution by some greater means than proxy ownership of the proletarian dictatorship.
Emphatically, for its limited successes, particularly in health care, Cuba deserves significant praise. On the other hand, as one of the discrete holdovers of the Cold War in the Soviet-socialist/Stalinist mode, I just cannot look at Cuba without jaundiced eyes, seeking to intellectually dismantle, from a Marxist perspective, what went wrong with the revolution and what needs to be changed to make it right! Succinctly, state socialism (a.k.a. state capitalism) deserves a serious reconsideration to determine where the actual collective appropriation of surplus labor (i.e. in Marx's sense, communism) actually takes place, how existing communist class structures (probably in clandestine private spaces and at the margins of the state economy) can be enhanced and multiplied (this is a project in which we might also benefit from an engagement in Massachusetts!). Perhaps a normalization of relations with the U.S. can aid in such a process. At the very least, the creeping presence of the market that such a normalization foretells might at least multiple the spaces within which economic development on entrepreneurial terms escapes the ruthless logic of the state, and, as such, maybe we will see increasing numbers of Cubans, unencumbered by state control, coming together to make better lives for themselves through collective appropriation and distribution of their surplus labor. Such a progression of market liberties might, as well, spill over into political life to introduce the legal expressions of view in contradiction to the political attitudes of the Castros, and into cultural life to introduce a new era of serious inquiry in Cuba into the nature of man, religion and the understanding of immateriality, spirit, and faith, and the importance of racial and sexual/gender equality. All such transformations would reinforce Cuba's place as a center and source of the progressive, socialistic, communist impulse in North America, for which all Western Marxists might simultaneously contribute and be perpetually indebted!
Moving past the possible/hopeful implications of normalization for Cuba, the past week has reintroduced, in distinctly visible expressions, the ubiquitous disfavor of a rabidly anti-Communist Cuban-American community in South Florida and other places. To be clear, I understand the position advocated by such individuals as U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida) and by individuals situated within the first generation of Cuban emigres, many of whom had lost significant personal/familial assets and experienced imprisonment/exile since the revolution. To paraphrase Lenin in regard to revolution, "you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs" - revolutionary transformations are always messy and uncomfortable, especially when your family stands with the old order. In 1959, those individuals who benefited from the dictatorship of Batista were up-ended and driven from prominence into poverty if not imprisonment and, eventually, exile. The same individuals or their descendants now stand as a significant Republican Party voting block in South Florida. That said, it stands to reason that Obama would decide to normalize relations now - he has nothing to lose from this group and, for that matter, neither does Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even as the first generation Cuban emigres rally against Obama's normalization of relations, their children, born Americans with the hope of reconnecting with the home of their ancestors, stand hopeful for the prospects of a reintegration with Cuba, particularly if such a normalization means that political change/liberalization in Cuba might accelerate. To a significant extent, Republican like Rubio have hashed their bets that the defeat of the Castros could never be realized by an extended coming out party for Cuba to the world as a new zone for capital investment and new, progressive political experiments - they appear to continue to hold out hope for some sort of successful Bay of Pigs transformation with the Castros in chains and capitalism striding victoriously in Havana. As an American Marxist, at least somewhat in sympathy and solidarity with the things that the Castros stood for, I hope that Rubio and his ilk are wrong, but, one way or another, I am confident that Obama has made them irrelevant, both in Miami and in Havana!
Emphatically, for its limited successes, particularly in health care, Cuba deserves significant praise. On the other hand, as one of the discrete holdovers of the Cold War in the Soviet-socialist/Stalinist mode, I just cannot look at Cuba without jaundiced eyes, seeking to intellectually dismantle, from a Marxist perspective, what went wrong with the revolution and what needs to be changed to make it right! Succinctly, state socialism (a.k.a. state capitalism) deserves a serious reconsideration to determine where the actual collective appropriation of surplus labor (i.e. in Marx's sense, communism) actually takes place, how existing communist class structures (probably in clandestine private spaces and at the margins of the state economy) can be enhanced and multiplied (this is a project in which we might also benefit from an engagement in Massachusetts!). Perhaps a normalization of relations with the U.S. can aid in such a process. At the very least, the creeping presence of the market that such a normalization foretells might at least multiple the spaces within which economic development on entrepreneurial terms escapes the ruthless logic of the state, and, as such, maybe we will see increasing numbers of Cubans, unencumbered by state control, coming together to make better lives for themselves through collective appropriation and distribution of their surplus labor. Such a progression of market liberties might, as well, spill over into political life to introduce the legal expressions of view in contradiction to the political attitudes of the Castros, and into cultural life to introduce a new era of serious inquiry in Cuba into the nature of man, religion and the understanding of immateriality, spirit, and faith, and the importance of racial and sexual/gender equality. All such transformations would reinforce Cuba's place as a center and source of the progressive, socialistic, communist impulse in North America, for which all Western Marxists might simultaneously contribute and be perpetually indebted!
Moving past the possible/hopeful implications of normalization for Cuba, the past week has reintroduced, in distinctly visible expressions, the ubiquitous disfavor of a rabidly anti-Communist Cuban-American community in South Florida and other places. To be clear, I understand the position advocated by such individuals as U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida) and by individuals situated within the first generation of Cuban emigres, many of whom had lost significant personal/familial assets and experienced imprisonment/exile since the revolution. To paraphrase Lenin in regard to revolution, "you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs" - revolutionary transformations are always messy and uncomfortable, especially when your family stands with the old order. In 1959, those individuals who benefited from the dictatorship of Batista were up-ended and driven from prominence into poverty if not imprisonment and, eventually, exile. The same individuals or their descendants now stand as a significant Republican Party voting block in South Florida. That said, it stands to reason that Obama would decide to normalize relations now - he has nothing to lose from this group and, for that matter, neither does Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even as the first generation Cuban emigres rally against Obama's normalization of relations, their children, born Americans with the hope of reconnecting with the home of their ancestors, stand hopeful for the prospects of a reintegration with Cuba, particularly if such a normalization means that political change/liberalization in Cuba might accelerate. To a significant extent, Republican like Rubio have hashed their bets that the defeat of the Castros could never be realized by an extended coming out party for Cuba to the world as a new zone for capital investment and new, progressive political experiments - they appear to continue to hold out hope for some sort of successful Bay of Pigs transformation with the Castros in chains and capitalism striding victoriously in Havana. As an American Marxist, at least somewhat in sympathy and solidarity with the things that the Castros stood for, I hope that Rubio and his ilk are wrong, but, one way or another, I am confident that Obama has made them irrelevant, both in Miami and in Havana!
Sony Pictures, North Korean Cyber-terrorism, and the Liberty of Americans to Produce and Disseminate Political Art
There are a number of issues that I really want to comment on today, but this one is doubtless the most easy to digest into a quick post before I head down to my father's house to bake Christmas cookies. I had managed to see previews for "The Interview," a comedy about an assassination attempt against North Korean President Kim Jung-Un, but I had had no intention of investing even five dollars on a discount movie Tuesday at my local Cinemark theater to see the film because I just don't get into this kind of farcical, amateurish, slap-stick comedy, even to the extent that it deploys clandestine satirical undertones. Emphatically, if the movie ever does see the light of day, I'm still not likely to waste two hours of my free time to watch it. The problem here with Sony Picture's decision to withdraw the movie from circulation and with the decisions of several major theater corporations not to air the movie is, precisely, as Obama and the Republican National Committee independently have argued this week, that these actions amount to the censorship of political art and political speech exercised by a foreign state under the threat of violence against Americans. It would have been one thing for North Korean hackers to compromise the internal networks of Sony Pictures to divulge information embarrassing to the corporation and its executive officers and to cause financial damages through the theft of internal materials as a reprisal to the release of "The Interview." If this were simply the case, then the actions undertaken against Sony by the North Korean government or by affiliated individuals would have been a relatively private matter, concerning the failure of an American corporation to adequately safeguard its internal networks to ensure that hackers, either under the employment or assistance of a foreign government or strictly private individuals (e.g. "Anonymous"), could not compromise internal information. The character of the attack this week was different insofar as it threatened physical violence against individual employees at Sony and threatened terrorist actions on American soil against wider numbers of American citizens if "The Interview" was released. Expressed in these terms, such a threat, leveled against the U.S. by a "shadow" entity linked to the North Korean government might have solicited an aggressive reaction by the U.S. government in the absence of any connection to the release of a motion picture. The fact that such threats were made explicitly in connection to the release of a motion picture, with particular satirical elements addressed toward the North Korean regime, and that these threats motivate self-censorship by a broad spectrum of the motion picture and cinematic industries, however, implicates the Constitutional artistic liberties of the movie's producers and screenwriters. What, precisely, are American screenwriters, producers, directors, and other motion picture professionals at liberty to produce if they have to pass the muster of censors half-way around the world?! There is something odious in the notion that American artists should be forced by the motion picture and cinematic industries out of fear that their work will offend parties in a foreign state to such an extent that they would be compelled to commit physically, lethally violent acts against persons and property in the U.S. if their art was publicly displayed!
My reaction to this event should be reasonably plain and consistent with that of the Obama administration. Sony Pictures and the cinematic corporations with which it contracts for first-run distribution of its movies should not have backed down on distribution of "The Interview." If terrorist actions against Americans were legitimately at issue, then the issue is wholly within the province of the U.S. government and its authorities, not private corporations who are vested with the authority to defend neither the life nor the property of American citizens. Respecting the sensible and realistic response from Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton that his company cannot be expected to release a motion picture that a large number of cinematic distributors have refused to present to their customers, the response from both the motion picture and cinematic industries to cyber-threats related to "The Interview" seems to imply that private, for-profit corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to act in defense of their property in lieu of directing such concerns for the protection of property and for the protection the lives of employees and customers to governmental authorities. A response of this nature might be analogous to the conclusion that an American corporation should take personal, private responsibility for the recovery of property seized by a foreign state or by private parties in a foreign country in lieu of diplomatic and/or military operations by the U.S. government. Even if Sony has generously compensated the producers and screenwriters of "The Interview" for their work and, thus, stands to lose a potentially large stream of revenue from its actions in squashing the film, neither Sony nor its cinematic partners had any right, emanating from their roles as for-profit capitalist corporations, to simultaneously usurp the authority of the U.S. government to act in defense of U.S. citizens, their property, and their Constitutional liberties and to subvert the artistic liberties of its screenwriters, producers, and other contracted motion picture professionals in the creation of "The Interview" and other prospective films referencing North Korea. In this respect, acknowledging that the U.S. government lacks the authority to compel a private corporation to release an artistic product for general distribution, I wish that there were some available means for the Obama administration to enforce punitive ramifications against the motion picture and cinematic industries for their behavior, against the best interests of the larger American public, in this incident.
Beyond this, acknowledging that the protection of the lives, property, and liberties of American citizens against threats issued by foreign states and their representatives remains wholly within the province of the U.S. government, to the extent that the North Korean government can be convincingly linked to the hacking of Sony Pictures and, more importantly, to the issuance of threats of physical violence against the U.S., the North Korean government needs to be explicitly and firmly punished for its behavior! As such, I don't know how much more the U.S. government can do to impose economic sanctions against North Korea. Something more needs to be done. Succinctly, we need to seriously investigate the means of the North Korean government to engage in cyber-warfare of this kind and determine how we can use available military, civil intelligence/counter-intelligence (i.e. NSA, CIA), and information warfare assets (i.e. U.S. government hackers) to definitively cripple the capacity of the North Korean government to engage in new cyber-warfare activities. I am not going to advance such a proposition with the notion that such a counter-offensive (within cyberspace and outside of it) would be easy or entirely uncomplicated by our need to cooperate with other governments, but such actions are absolutely indispensable if we intend to defend the artistic liberties of Americans against the capacity of a foreign government to censor the works of American citizens out of fear that the production of some satirical work will, through the global dissemination of ideas, undermine its capacity to exercise tyranny against its people.
My reaction to this event should be reasonably plain and consistent with that of the Obama administration. Sony Pictures and the cinematic corporations with which it contracts for first-run distribution of its movies should not have backed down on distribution of "The Interview." If terrorist actions against Americans were legitimately at issue, then the issue is wholly within the province of the U.S. government and its authorities, not private corporations who are vested with the authority to defend neither the life nor the property of American citizens. Respecting the sensible and realistic response from Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton that his company cannot be expected to release a motion picture that a large number of cinematic distributors have refused to present to their customers, the response from both the motion picture and cinematic industries to cyber-threats related to "The Interview" seems to imply that private, for-profit corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to act in defense of their property in lieu of directing such concerns for the protection of property and for the protection the lives of employees and customers to governmental authorities. A response of this nature might be analogous to the conclusion that an American corporation should take personal, private responsibility for the recovery of property seized by a foreign state or by private parties in a foreign country in lieu of diplomatic and/or military operations by the U.S. government. Even if Sony has generously compensated the producers and screenwriters of "The Interview" for their work and, thus, stands to lose a potentially large stream of revenue from its actions in squashing the film, neither Sony nor its cinematic partners had any right, emanating from their roles as for-profit capitalist corporations, to simultaneously usurp the authority of the U.S. government to act in defense of U.S. citizens, their property, and their Constitutional liberties and to subvert the artistic liberties of its screenwriters, producers, and other contracted motion picture professionals in the creation of "The Interview" and other prospective films referencing North Korea. In this respect, acknowledging that the U.S. government lacks the authority to compel a private corporation to release an artistic product for general distribution, I wish that there were some available means for the Obama administration to enforce punitive ramifications against the motion picture and cinematic industries for their behavior, against the best interests of the larger American public, in this incident.
Beyond this, acknowledging that the protection of the lives, property, and liberties of American citizens against threats issued by foreign states and their representatives remains wholly within the province of the U.S. government, to the extent that the North Korean government can be convincingly linked to the hacking of Sony Pictures and, more importantly, to the issuance of threats of physical violence against the U.S., the North Korean government needs to be explicitly and firmly punished for its behavior! As such, I don't know how much more the U.S. government can do to impose economic sanctions against North Korea. Something more needs to be done. Succinctly, we need to seriously investigate the means of the North Korean government to engage in cyber-warfare of this kind and determine how we can use available military, civil intelligence/counter-intelligence (i.e. NSA, CIA), and information warfare assets (i.e. U.S. government hackers) to definitively cripple the capacity of the North Korean government to engage in new cyber-warfare activities. I am not going to advance such a proposition with the notion that such a counter-offensive (within cyberspace and outside of it) would be easy or entirely uncomplicated by our need to cooperate with other governments, but such actions are absolutely indispensable if we intend to defend the artistic liberties of Americans against the capacity of a foreign government to censor the works of American citizens out of fear that the production of some satirical work will, through the global dissemination of ideas, undermine its capacity to exercise tyranny against its people.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
The Battle of Ferguson II - Envisioning Alternatives in Law Enforcement Practices
3. Any resolution of the issues raised by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson must respond with changes to the theories and practices of police organization and operations within communities with large numbers of African-Americans and other, especially low-income, minority groups. Such changes must involve a significant expansion of formalized cooperation with community leaders (especially clergy), increased recourse to non-traditional methods in responding to a range of domestic disputes and non-violent criminal activity, and enhanced specialization by departmental sections to manage the intelligence capabilities of local departments and better respond to chronic sources of violent crime. More emphatically, such transformations in the organization and operations of police require a revolutionary transformation to democratize local control over police forces and create an overriding conformity between the interests of citizens and the mission of their police forces.
Over the last two weeks, since the decision of a Missouri grand jury to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for his actions in the killing the Michael Brown, we have seen a brief and punctuated return to violence in Ferguson, followed by a more subdued continuity of more or less non-violent protests, including a march to the state capital at Jefferson City. More significantly, protests have arisen across the country in response to the failure of a New York City grand jury to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for his role in the death of Eric Garner, who died from cardiac arrest induced by asphyxiation after Officer Pantaleo used a chokehold to subdued him. In addition to the ubiquitous "hands up, don't shoot" chants of the Ferguson-inspired protests, the "I can't breath" uttered by Eric Garner, with his head shoved to the ground by officers, appears to be reappearing in new protests. Likewise, protests against the grand jury non-indictment in the Garner case have featured the appearance, in public places and often blocking traffic in major urban thoroughfairs and highways, of the "die-in" (i.e. lots of protesters lying down and playing dead in the middle of the road). A criminal investigation may be forthcoming but, as in these previous cases, an indictment is unlikely to be issued in the case of Cleveland, Ohio police officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally shot 12-year old Tamir Rice, in the possession of an air gun suspected to be an actual firearm. Finally, and conversely, a White former police chief in Eutawville, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Richard Combs, has just been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of an African-American male, Bernard Bailey, in May 2011, who had apparently become agitated at the Eutawville Town Hall where he was protesting a traffic violation against his daughter.
As a summary of progress or non-progress over the last few weeks within the legal system, responding to violence by police officers against African-American men, these events suggest to me that the larger problem of antagonistic relations between law enforcement officers and racial minority communities in the U.S. is not going to be resolved through recourse to the criminal justice system, if only because we are running squarely against a racial divergence in the conception of what constitutes justice and, moreover, a fundamental denial on the part of most White Americans that such a divergence either exists or that a rational basis exists for African-Americans to believe that the use of lethal violence by the law enforcement community has disproportionately and wrongly targeted African-American men. To assume that presumptive concerns of excessive use of violence by police against African-American men could be adequately addressed by the prosecution of a spattering of officers involved in certain cases across the country would tend to reduce such concerns to the problem of "a few bad/racist cops," and, in my opinion, this does not adequately address either the scale or the nature/origins of the problem. These origins are to be located at a foundational level in American cultural/ideological processes and can only be addressed by systematically bringing into question the nature of race in the U.S. As such, in the case of law enforcement and criminal justice, we need to approach current theory and practice with an expressed admission that race shapes and determines how we go about policing communities and how we go about incarcerating and/or rehabilitating/reintegrating criminals - it will not do to approach these questions from a race-neutral perspective because our culture is emphatically not race-neutral.
(For the alternative view, see (or listen to) the interview by National Public Radio's Rachel Martin with Dallas Deputy Police Chief Malik Aziz, the Chairman of the National Black Police Association in "Police in Other Communities are Consumed by Ferguson," NPR, 7 Dec. 2014, at: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/07/369108503/police-in-other-communities-are-consumed-by-ferguson. Succinctly, Deputy Chief Aziz not only suggests that the problem can be reduced, in part, to the presence of a tiny handful of racist police officers in the larger law enforcement community, but also argues that the civilian population bears responsibility for a "cultural disconnect," arising when individuals stopped by police do not fully comply with the direction of officers. Conceding that Deputy Chief Aziz is quite correct in arguing that it might pose adverse effects on an individual's health to resist arrest or otherwise challenge a police officer in his/her duties, his perspective demonstrates of a limitation of the perspective of police professionals in relation to the political processes through which they are conferred responsibility to maintain the peace and order. We need to recognize the subjective positionality of such perspectives and acknowledge that law enforcement practices are a subject of continuous political contestation within any democratic social formation. That is to say, while I can't fault Aziz for his steadfast professionalism and objectivity, there is something about its disconnection from the culture and politics of racialism that I both find distasteful as an ardent democrat and, ultimately, at the root of the racialist problem that we are awakening to!)
This section of my comments seeks to briefly address one particular set of questions involved in what needs to be a broad, revolutionary transformation of law enforcement and criminal justice theory and practice. Specifically, how must law enforcement change in order to accomodate a continuous engagement with racialism and, in so doing, embody a stronger commitment to democratization in the organization and direction/oversight of law enforcement, particularly in communities with large numbers of African-Americans, other racial minorities, and, more broadly, low-income groupings (insofar as the dynamic of race is intermingled in questions of income-based stratification and the continuous rise of income inequality since the 1970s)? In true Marxist form, I do not have any all-encompassing, universal solutions to this inquiry. Moreover, at this point in U.S. history, it seems that, notwithstanding the possible benefits that could manifest themselves in a federal Justice Department investigation of local police departments to evaluate the systematic nature of police practices against African-American and other racial minority communities, the federal government has little to add to the conversation on how local police departments need to change in order to address racial disparities in law enforcement practices. We are not necessarily dealing with an inadequacy of good laws/statutory standards on the national/federal level but with a divergence in the commitment at the local/municipal level to engage with racialism and to stop denying the reality of race as an underlying and, to some degree, unconscious factor in local law enforcement practices.
First, police departments in communities like Ferguson need to incorporate formalized connections to individuals within the larger community that can function to both facilitate enhanced cooperation in particular law enforcement initiatives and enhance the general level of trust conferred on the police department by the community as a function of its embedded character within the community. Such connections, of course, rely on the existence of individuals capable of acting as leaders within the larger community, exerting a degree of moral force over the community transcending legal authority. For that matter, it demands that the community exists as a cohesive entity or a network of associations, with or without leaders. Talking about the "African-American community" in Ferguson, Missouri or in other places takes for granted that such an entity actually exists, that individuals within it embody a sense of belonging to the community, and that the community can be marshalled by leaders to respect the authoritative direction of such individuals. Such considerations are foundational to what I am arguing here, and it is by no means clear that the African-American community of Ferguson actually exists as something other than a rhetorical device in the machinations of the American mass media! We might argue that, as a result of the events since the Michael Brown shooting, an African-American community in Ferguson has congealed around the broader sentiment of discontent toward police brutality. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether such a community would remain intact in the absence of collective discontent or, rather, whether a community could be forged to act permanently in Ferguson on its own behalf as a discrete segment of the democratic sovereign, acting, in part, over the municipal government and the police. In a more broadly democractic sense, I am asking whether a collective body, among the residents of Ferguson, exists to take permanent ownership over the government and police department in a way that they can both command the organization and operations of law enforcement authorities and accept ownership of its practices by virtue of consent to their outcomes (i.e. everyone recognizes that when a police officer tells someone to stop, they stop, because, in the end, that officer is just enacting the will of the community, demanded by the community, to maintain the peace and order of the community).
Realizing, to some extent, that this initial argument unpacks a demand on the police and municipal government of Ferguson to find ways to interact cooperatively with residents, it more critically makes a enormous demand on the residents of Ferguson and, especially, on its African-American "community" - that they have to start acting collectively like a democratic sovereign and demand that their government act on their behalf. That is to say, any real transformation of the relationship between the African-American community and law enforcement in Ferguson and elsewhere is going to be a multi-dimensional process, involving the reassertion of democratic will by a disempowered and apathetic or otherwise frustrated African-American community, the willingness of local government and law enforcement to cooperate with newly self-empowered citizens, and the openness of White neighbors to engage in a broader cultural and political conversation on race in a manner that supports the larger transformative process and recognizes the equality and interconnectedness of all citizens as a requisite to democracy and justice for all members of the community, Black and White.
Dispensing, for the moment, with the larger question of mass organization to promote political transformations and returning to the limited concern of how police departments like that of Ferguson need to change, such police departments need to "deputize" (for lack of a better term) community leaders and influential individuals within the community to undertake a range of law enforcement duties unlikely to result in the need to subdue, arrest/detain, or otherwise employ repressive violence against individuals. In this regard, I have in mind a range of activities that might be characterized as "community interventions," intended to manifest a profylactic impact on individuals who might otherwise subsequently become involved in criminal activities. Domestic household disturbances and youth involvement in "gang" activity would certainly fall within this range of police interventions. The idea of introducing such a formal role for individuals who would, by expectation, not be vested with the authority to detain/arrest individuals or to carry firearms or other lethal or non-lethal means of physical violence is to create a division of labor within the formal apparatus of state repressive processes between activities that axiomatically demand the use of police detention/arrest (with or without subsequent recourse to the criminal justice system) and possible recourse to means of lethal violence and activities that strictly demand intervention, mediation of disputes, surveillance, and/or prolonged contact/mentoring/direction of individuals (without any expectation of recourse to the criminal justice system).
Moreover, by formalizing such a role by non-uniformed individuals within the community, direct consultation and joint consultation with uniformed police officials on individual cases would tend to reinforce a cooperative ethos between the community as a whole and uniformed law enforcement authorities, lending further weight to community education through non-uniformed consultants around broader law enforcement issues, like drug control. Finally, the establishment of networks of non-uniformed community consultants might serve as a building block to the development of further community policing networks. An introductory conception of my meaning here might be constituted by neighborhood watch programs, but community policing networking must go further to incorporate broader intervention on a range of individual and community development issues, recognizing a range of cultural and economic processes at the local level contribute to the creation of individuals "at risk" for criminal activity.
Investing a significant weight behind the notion of formalized community involvement in policing, certain questions remain. Notably, if community leaders are to be deputized as non-uniformed consultants and direct intervening authorities in place of uniformed law enforcement authorities, should such individuals be compensated by municipalities for their official duties and, if so, what impact would such processes have on municipal police budgets? Offering a short answer, I do think non-uniformed consultants/authorities need to be compensated for their involvement with law enforcment insofar as their activities represent a formal substitution of uniformed officers for non-uniformed conflict mediators, educators, and community organizers. Developing a formula for such compensation involves more complicated issues that need to be approached on a case by case basis. As suggested, however, the introduction of an alternative, community-based model of policing with a division of labor between non-uniformed and uniformed law enforcement components will certainly mandate a reconsideration of fiscal management by municipalities, if only because greater involvement in day-to-day law enforcement by non-uniformed individuals will make particular activities by uniformed officers redundant and, thus, maintenance of more extensive numbers of uniformed officers in certain municipalities would be both unnecessary and fiscally prohibitive. Again, if the idea is to partially substitute one kind of law enforcement by uniformed officers for another form, undertaken by non-uniformed community mediators and organizers, then we need to play out the ramifications for municipal fiscal management in order to recognize that municipalities would have to reorganize their law enforcement budgets, possibly in ways that might save municipal tax revenues relative to models of law enforcement restricted to utilization of professional uniformed officers in traditionally organized departments. On the other hand, the merit involved a major rethinking in the organization of law enforcement cannot be limited to the potential fiscal benefits of a reduction in the size of police budgets - if application of alternative models actually raised expenditures on law enforcement because the range of activities with which community consultants/mediators/organizers concerned themselves expanded significantly in relation to traditional law enforcement, such a transformation would still be worthwhile for the fact that it achieves of more fundamental regrounding of law enforcement at the level of the community.
Another obvious question to be approached here concerns the sort of individuals that might be integrated as non-uniformed consultants/mediators/organizers. The immediate thought that enters my mind, to these ends, especially in regard to African-American communities, is that cooperation with pastors/clergy and highly involved lay church members, as the primary moral pillars of local communities, is critical. Beyond the churches, educators within both public and private schools, especially at schools located within the community, would significantly aid community intervention activities related to the individual development of children and young adults and the identification of households in need of intervention and support by social service professionals. We should also consider individuals involved in diverse ranges of community organizing activity (e.g. anti-poverty organizations, labor organizers, etc.), as individuals invested with a certain degree of locally-specific knowledge and abilities consistent with the sort of network building that a successful transition to a community-based model of law enforcement would require. Finally, I would be amiss if I did not also include local entrepreneurs and other individuals within the business community capable of exerting some moral force in their interactions with others in the community.
Beyond the integration of a more community centric, non-uniformed law enforcement model, we have to consider how uniformed components in law enforcement have to change, per se. To the extent that what I am arguing for is a new division of labor between non-uniformed, deputized community consultants/mediators/organizers and uniformed police, it stands to reason that uniformed law enforcement officials would become much more specialized in a range of practices that will require highly trained, professional officers, handling lethal and non-lethal means to subdue, detain/arrest suspects and operate in cooperation in non-uniformed consultants to deal with public disturbances that cannot be adequately addressed by non-uniformed personnel. Moreover, cooperation with non-uniformed consultants will offer to uniformed police new and better resources for surveillance and collection of intelligence on criminal activities within neighborhoods, better enabling police to handle organized crime and other endemic problems. Finally, uniformed law enforcement components would constitute a logical point of contact and coordination between upper level law enforcement authorities (e.g. state police, FBI and other federal authorities) and non-uniformed community consultants to manage larger law enforcement strategies and effectively ensure a flow of information/intelligence. Succintly, the point is not to eliminate traditional police forces in the present-day conception but to truncate the range of things that traditional uniformed police do in order to enhance their effectiveness in a law enforcement model that places new stress on the role of non-uniformed community mediators.
As an organizational and fiscal matter, if traditional uniformed police were to become more specialized in a range of duties that did not require continuous day-to-day involvement/interaction with the community outside of contact with non-uniformed consultants, then I would expect that the scale of uniformed components within local police departments would be diminished. Again, if we are replacing the "beat patrolman" with a non-uniformed, unarmed community mediator, then we would be replacing existing patrolman positions with a smaller number of detective positions, specialized "SWAT"-type units (assuming a role would still exist for the latter and local forces cannot be substituted for, say, state-level resources), and available responders to a diminished range of situations in which armed officers would be indispensible (e.g. addressing organized criminal activity).
To conclude this section, the realization of such changes to law enforcement is fundamentally predicated on the transformation/democratization of local government and control/direction over law enforcement authorities. If local communities do not possess the substantive electoral means to legislate the character of municipal government, including the organization and doctrinal policies of police departments, then we will never realize a transition to new law enforcement models of a more community-centric form. Emphatically, enhancement of the democratic process is at the heart of what I have offered in this section, and, in communities like Ferguson, it seems that a deficit in democratic control by the African-American community over the direction and organization of the municipal government coincides with its mismatch against a police department whose organization is ill suited to the needs of the community. In the end, beyond asserting the need for an alternative, community-centric model of policing, the deeper problem for Ferguson remains in articulating the meaning and purpose of community and translating this articulation into the demand for a revolutionary democratic transformation of municipal government and law enforcement consistent with its needs.
Over the last two weeks, since the decision of a Missouri grand jury to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for his actions in the killing the Michael Brown, we have seen a brief and punctuated return to violence in Ferguson, followed by a more subdued continuity of more or less non-violent protests, including a march to the state capital at Jefferson City. More significantly, protests have arisen across the country in response to the failure of a New York City grand jury to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for his role in the death of Eric Garner, who died from cardiac arrest induced by asphyxiation after Officer Pantaleo used a chokehold to subdued him. In addition to the ubiquitous "hands up, don't shoot" chants of the Ferguson-inspired protests, the "I can't breath" uttered by Eric Garner, with his head shoved to the ground by officers, appears to be reappearing in new protests. Likewise, protests against the grand jury non-indictment in the Garner case have featured the appearance, in public places and often blocking traffic in major urban thoroughfairs and highways, of the "die-in" (i.e. lots of protesters lying down and playing dead in the middle of the road). A criminal investigation may be forthcoming but, as in these previous cases, an indictment is unlikely to be issued in the case of Cleveland, Ohio police officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally shot 12-year old Tamir Rice, in the possession of an air gun suspected to be an actual firearm. Finally, and conversely, a White former police chief in Eutawville, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, Richard Combs, has just been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of an African-American male, Bernard Bailey, in May 2011, who had apparently become agitated at the Eutawville Town Hall where he was protesting a traffic violation against his daughter.
As a summary of progress or non-progress over the last few weeks within the legal system, responding to violence by police officers against African-American men, these events suggest to me that the larger problem of antagonistic relations between law enforcement officers and racial minority communities in the U.S. is not going to be resolved through recourse to the criminal justice system, if only because we are running squarely against a racial divergence in the conception of what constitutes justice and, moreover, a fundamental denial on the part of most White Americans that such a divergence either exists or that a rational basis exists for African-Americans to believe that the use of lethal violence by the law enforcement community has disproportionately and wrongly targeted African-American men. To assume that presumptive concerns of excessive use of violence by police against African-American men could be adequately addressed by the prosecution of a spattering of officers involved in certain cases across the country would tend to reduce such concerns to the problem of "a few bad/racist cops," and, in my opinion, this does not adequately address either the scale or the nature/origins of the problem. These origins are to be located at a foundational level in American cultural/ideological processes and can only be addressed by systematically bringing into question the nature of race in the U.S. As such, in the case of law enforcement and criminal justice, we need to approach current theory and practice with an expressed admission that race shapes and determines how we go about policing communities and how we go about incarcerating and/or rehabilitating/reintegrating criminals - it will not do to approach these questions from a race-neutral perspective because our culture is emphatically not race-neutral.
(For the alternative view, see (or listen to) the interview by National Public Radio's Rachel Martin with Dallas Deputy Police Chief Malik Aziz, the Chairman of the National Black Police Association in "Police in Other Communities are Consumed by Ferguson," NPR, 7 Dec. 2014, at: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/07/369108503/police-in-other-communities-are-consumed-by-ferguson. Succinctly, Deputy Chief Aziz not only suggests that the problem can be reduced, in part, to the presence of a tiny handful of racist police officers in the larger law enforcement community, but also argues that the civilian population bears responsibility for a "cultural disconnect," arising when individuals stopped by police do not fully comply with the direction of officers. Conceding that Deputy Chief Aziz is quite correct in arguing that it might pose adverse effects on an individual's health to resist arrest or otherwise challenge a police officer in his/her duties, his perspective demonstrates of a limitation of the perspective of police professionals in relation to the political processes through which they are conferred responsibility to maintain the peace and order. We need to recognize the subjective positionality of such perspectives and acknowledge that law enforcement practices are a subject of continuous political contestation within any democratic social formation. That is to say, while I can't fault Aziz for his steadfast professionalism and objectivity, there is something about its disconnection from the culture and politics of racialism that I both find distasteful as an ardent democrat and, ultimately, at the root of the racialist problem that we are awakening to!)
This section of my comments seeks to briefly address one particular set of questions involved in what needs to be a broad, revolutionary transformation of law enforcement and criminal justice theory and practice. Specifically, how must law enforcement change in order to accomodate a continuous engagement with racialism and, in so doing, embody a stronger commitment to democratization in the organization and direction/oversight of law enforcement, particularly in communities with large numbers of African-Americans, other racial minorities, and, more broadly, low-income groupings (insofar as the dynamic of race is intermingled in questions of income-based stratification and the continuous rise of income inequality since the 1970s)? In true Marxist form, I do not have any all-encompassing, universal solutions to this inquiry. Moreover, at this point in U.S. history, it seems that, notwithstanding the possible benefits that could manifest themselves in a federal Justice Department investigation of local police departments to evaluate the systematic nature of police practices against African-American and other racial minority communities, the federal government has little to add to the conversation on how local police departments need to change in order to address racial disparities in law enforcement practices. We are not necessarily dealing with an inadequacy of good laws/statutory standards on the national/federal level but with a divergence in the commitment at the local/municipal level to engage with racialism and to stop denying the reality of race as an underlying and, to some degree, unconscious factor in local law enforcement practices.
First, police departments in communities like Ferguson need to incorporate formalized connections to individuals within the larger community that can function to both facilitate enhanced cooperation in particular law enforcement initiatives and enhance the general level of trust conferred on the police department by the community as a function of its embedded character within the community. Such connections, of course, rely on the existence of individuals capable of acting as leaders within the larger community, exerting a degree of moral force over the community transcending legal authority. For that matter, it demands that the community exists as a cohesive entity or a network of associations, with or without leaders. Talking about the "African-American community" in Ferguson, Missouri or in other places takes for granted that such an entity actually exists, that individuals within it embody a sense of belonging to the community, and that the community can be marshalled by leaders to respect the authoritative direction of such individuals. Such considerations are foundational to what I am arguing here, and it is by no means clear that the African-American community of Ferguson actually exists as something other than a rhetorical device in the machinations of the American mass media! We might argue that, as a result of the events since the Michael Brown shooting, an African-American community in Ferguson has congealed around the broader sentiment of discontent toward police brutality. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether such a community would remain intact in the absence of collective discontent or, rather, whether a community could be forged to act permanently in Ferguson on its own behalf as a discrete segment of the democratic sovereign, acting, in part, over the municipal government and the police. In a more broadly democractic sense, I am asking whether a collective body, among the residents of Ferguson, exists to take permanent ownership over the government and police department in a way that they can both command the organization and operations of law enforcement authorities and accept ownership of its practices by virtue of consent to their outcomes (i.e. everyone recognizes that when a police officer tells someone to stop, they stop, because, in the end, that officer is just enacting the will of the community, demanded by the community, to maintain the peace and order of the community).
Realizing, to some extent, that this initial argument unpacks a demand on the police and municipal government of Ferguson to find ways to interact cooperatively with residents, it more critically makes a enormous demand on the residents of Ferguson and, especially, on its African-American "community" - that they have to start acting collectively like a democratic sovereign and demand that their government act on their behalf. That is to say, any real transformation of the relationship between the African-American community and law enforcement in Ferguson and elsewhere is going to be a multi-dimensional process, involving the reassertion of democratic will by a disempowered and apathetic or otherwise frustrated African-American community, the willingness of local government and law enforcement to cooperate with newly self-empowered citizens, and the openness of White neighbors to engage in a broader cultural and political conversation on race in a manner that supports the larger transformative process and recognizes the equality and interconnectedness of all citizens as a requisite to democracy and justice for all members of the community, Black and White.
Dispensing, for the moment, with the larger question of mass organization to promote political transformations and returning to the limited concern of how police departments like that of Ferguson need to change, such police departments need to "deputize" (for lack of a better term) community leaders and influential individuals within the community to undertake a range of law enforcement duties unlikely to result in the need to subdue, arrest/detain, or otherwise employ repressive violence against individuals. In this regard, I have in mind a range of activities that might be characterized as "community interventions," intended to manifest a profylactic impact on individuals who might otherwise subsequently become involved in criminal activities. Domestic household disturbances and youth involvement in "gang" activity would certainly fall within this range of police interventions. The idea of introducing such a formal role for individuals who would, by expectation, not be vested with the authority to detain/arrest individuals or to carry firearms or other lethal or non-lethal means of physical violence is to create a division of labor within the formal apparatus of state repressive processes between activities that axiomatically demand the use of police detention/arrest (with or without subsequent recourse to the criminal justice system) and possible recourse to means of lethal violence and activities that strictly demand intervention, mediation of disputes, surveillance, and/or prolonged contact/mentoring/direction of individuals (without any expectation of recourse to the criminal justice system).
Moreover, by formalizing such a role by non-uniformed individuals within the community, direct consultation and joint consultation with uniformed police officials on individual cases would tend to reinforce a cooperative ethos between the community as a whole and uniformed law enforcement authorities, lending further weight to community education through non-uniformed consultants around broader law enforcement issues, like drug control. Finally, the establishment of networks of non-uniformed community consultants might serve as a building block to the development of further community policing networks. An introductory conception of my meaning here might be constituted by neighborhood watch programs, but community policing networking must go further to incorporate broader intervention on a range of individual and community development issues, recognizing a range of cultural and economic processes at the local level contribute to the creation of individuals "at risk" for criminal activity.
Investing a significant weight behind the notion of formalized community involvement in policing, certain questions remain. Notably, if community leaders are to be deputized as non-uniformed consultants and direct intervening authorities in place of uniformed law enforcement authorities, should such individuals be compensated by municipalities for their official duties and, if so, what impact would such processes have on municipal police budgets? Offering a short answer, I do think non-uniformed consultants/authorities need to be compensated for their involvement with law enforcment insofar as their activities represent a formal substitution of uniformed officers for non-uniformed conflict mediators, educators, and community organizers. Developing a formula for such compensation involves more complicated issues that need to be approached on a case by case basis. As suggested, however, the introduction of an alternative, community-based model of policing with a division of labor between non-uniformed and uniformed law enforcement components will certainly mandate a reconsideration of fiscal management by municipalities, if only because greater involvement in day-to-day law enforcement by non-uniformed individuals will make particular activities by uniformed officers redundant and, thus, maintenance of more extensive numbers of uniformed officers in certain municipalities would be both unnecessary and fiscally prohibitive. Again, if the idea is to partially substitute one kind of law enforcement by uniformed officers for another form, undertaken by non-uniformed community mediators and organizers, then we need to play out the ramifications for municipal fiscal management in order to recognize that municipalities would have to reorganize their law enforcement budgets, possibly in ways that might save municipal tax revenues relative to models of law enforcement restricted to utilization of professional uniformed officers in traditionally organized departments. On the other hand, the merit involved a major rethinking in the organization of law enforcement cannot be limited to the potential fiscal benefits of a reduction in the size of police budgets - if application of alternative models actually raised expenditures on law enforcement because the range of activities with which community consultants/mediators/organizers concerned themselves expanded significantly in relation to traditional law enforcement, such a transformation would still be worthwhile for the fact that it achieves of more fundamental regrounding of law enforcement at the level of the community.
Another obvious question to be approached here concerns the sort of individuals that might be integrated as non-uniformed consultants/mediators/organizers. The immediate thought that enters my mind, to these ends, especially in regard to African-American communities, is that cooperation with pastors/clergy and highly involved lay church members, as the primary moral pillars of local communities, is critical. Beyond the churches, educators within both public and private schools, especially at schools located within the community, would significantly aid community intervention activities related to the individual development of children and young adults and the identification of households in need of intervention and support by social service professionals. We should also consider individuals involved in diverse ranges of community organizing activity (e.g. anti-poverty organizations, labor organizers, etc.), as individuals invested with a certain degree of locally-specific knowledge and abilities consistent with the sort of network building that a successful transition to a community-based model of law enforcement would require. Finally, I would be amiss if I did not also include local entrepreneurs and other individuals within the business community capable of exerting some moral force in their interactions with others in the community.
Beyond the integration of a more community centric, non-uniformed law enforcement model, we have to consider how uniformed components in law enforcement have to change, per se. To the extent that what I am arguing for is a new division of labor between non-uniformed, deputized community consultants/mediators/organizers and uniformed police, it stands to reason that uniformed law enforcement officials would become much more specialized in a range of practices that will require highly trained, professional officers, handling lethal and non-lethal means to subdue, detain/arrest suspects and operate in cooperation in non-uniformed consultants to deal with public disturbances that cannot be adequately addressed by non-uniformed personnel. Moreover, cooperation with non-uniformed consultants will offer to uniformed police new and better resources for surveillance and collection of intelligence on criminal activities within neighborhoods, better enabling police to handle organized crime and other endemic problems. Finally, uniformed law enforcement components would constitute a logical point of contact and coordination between upper level law enforcement authorities (e.g. state police, FBI and other federal authorities) and non-uniformed community consultants to manage larger law enforcement strategies and effectively ensure a flow of information/intelligence. Succintly, the point is not to eliminate traditional police forces in the present-day conception but to truncate the range of things that traditional uniformed police do in order to enhance their effectiveness in a law enforcement model that places new stress on the role of non-uniformed community mediators.
As an organizational and fiscal matter, if traditional uniformed police were to become more specialized in a range of duties that did not require continuous day-to-day involvement/interaction with the community outside of contact with non-uniformed consultants, then I would expect that the scale of uniformed components within local police departments would be diminished. Again, if we are replacing the "beat patrolman" with a non-uniformed, unarmed community mediator, then we would be replacing existing patrolman positions with a smaller number of detective positions, specialized "SWAT"-type units (assuming a role would still exist for the latter and local forces cannot be substituted for, say, state-level resources), and available responders to a diminished range of situations in which armed officers would be indispensible (e.g. addressing organized criminal activity).
To conclude this section, the realization of such changes to law enforcement is fundamentally predicated on the transformation/democratization of local government and control/direction over law enforcement authorities. If local communities do not possess the substantive electoral means to legislate the character of municipal government, including the organization and doctrinal policies of police departments, then we will never realize a transition to new law enforcement models of a more community-centric form. Emphatically, enhancement of the democratic process is at the heart of what I have offered in this section, and, in communities like Ferguson, it seems that a deficit in democratic control by the African-American community over the direction and organization of the municipal government coincides with its mismatch against a police department whose organization is ill suited to the needs of the community. In the end, beyond asserting the need for an alternative, community-centric model of policing, the deeper problem for Ferguson remains in articulating the meaning and purpose of community and translating this articulation into the demand for a revolutionary democratic transformation of municipal government and law enforcement consistent with its needs.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Sadly Trapped Again on a Theme: Failure to Indict New York Police Officers Involved in the Death of Eric Garner
For the second time in two weeks, a grand jury failed to serve an indictment against police officers involved in the death of an unarmed African-American man. On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a 43 year old African-American male who had been previously arrested and charged with selling untaxed cigarettes among other charges, was approached by a plain-clothes New York police officer in front of a private business in Garner's neighborhood on Staten Island, New York City. On being approached, Garner became hostile, swatting at the arms of officers attempting to subdue him and demanding that they leave him alone. One officer, Daniel Pantaleo, got behind Garner and attempted to subdue him by applying a chokehold around Garner's neck. Together with the other officers on scene, Pantaleo managed to force Garner onto the ground, face down, enabling other officers to force his arms behind his back to apply handcuffs, while Garner pleaded to the officers that he could not breath. Garner's asphyxiation at the hands of Pantaleo, aggravating an underlying asthmatic respiratory condition and heart problems complicated by obesity, induced cardiac arrest, leading to Garner's death. The entire incident, moreover, was video taped and the video was publicized online (see "(Full) Black Man KILLED After NYPD Cop Puts Him in a CHOKEHOLD For Breaking Up a FIGHT," at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo).
One issue appears critical in regard to this incident: the New York Police Department has apparently maintained a policy since 1993 banning the use of chokeholds by officers attempting to subdue suspects resisting arrest. Under the particular circumstances of the incidents, it seems likely that Officer Pantaleo evaluated the situation, including the physical size of Mr. Garner, at 6'3'' and 350 lbs., and concluded that some measure to incapacitate Mr. Garner would be required if he was going to be apprehended without bringing physical harm to either his fellow officers or Garner. On its face, it seems improbable that Pantaleo was attempting to create a set of circumstances in which Garner might suffer cardiac arrest. On the other hand, whether or not Pantaleo's intentions were innocuous, the fact remains that he employed a incapacitation technique that was prohibited by the New York Police Department, I presume, for the very reason that its use might lead to precisely the sort of situation in which asphyxiation of a suspect under a chokehold might lead to the suspect's death, as it did here. At the very least, Officer Pantaleo must face departmental reprimand, if not outright dismissal, for grossly violating operating instructions mandated by the New York Police Department and, as a result, contributing to the death of a suspect in his custody.
On the other hand, a violation of departmental operating instructions is not equivalent to a criminal violation, subject to indictment and prosecution. If, to some extent, police officers deserve some greater deference against criminal prosecution for their actions if their actions lead to the involuntary death of a suspect, then the grand jury should have attached some significance on the fact that the use of a chokehold violated departmental procedures intended to protect the lives of unarmed suspects subdued by officers. It would seem that the grand jury must have concluded that any effort to subdue Mr. Garner would have endangered his life in view of his underlying health conditions, even if Pantaleo and his colleagues had strictly followed departmental procedures. As such, the critical consideration for the grand jury was the fact that Mr. Garner was asthmatic and suffered from various precipitating conditions for heart disease. Had the onus been placed on Officer Pantaleo's use of a prohibited incapacitation technique, then, I presume, it would have been much more likely that he would have been indicted for involuntary manslaughter, against which New York prosecutors would have been compelled to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Office Pantaleo inadvertently and negligently created circumstances in which Mr. Garner's life would have been placed in danger.
Again, however, the larger issue here, as in the case of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, concerns the particular methodologies used by law enforcement authorities in interacting with minority communities. A broader reconsideration of the organization and operations of police forces, as they relate to African-American, Hispanic, and other communities is needed here. That is to say, if, at a facial level, grand juries in St. Louis and New York City made the right calls in adjudicating the circumstances involved in the deaths of two African-American suspects, then it reveals the extent to which the larger problem evident in the relationships between majority White police forces and majority Black neighborhood communities transcends individual incidents. It demands revolutionary change that will, first, transform the resources that police forces can utilize to interact with non-White communities in enforcing law and, second, transform the nature of democratic control utilized by local communities over police departments to ensure that the use of police power will continuously support and advance the interests of community as a whole, not to the exclusion of low income or racially defined groups.
One issue appears critical in regard to this incident: the New York Police Department has apparently maintained a policy since 1993 banning the use of chokeholds by officers attempting to subdue suspects resisting arrest. Under the particular circumstances of the incidents, it seems likely that Officer Pantaleo evaluated the situation, including the physical size of Mr. Garner, at 6'3'' and 350 lbs., and concluded that some measure to incapacitate Mr. Garner would be required if he was going to be apprehended without bringing physical harm to either his fellow officers or Garner. On its face, it seems improbable that Pantaleo was attempting to create a set of circumstances in which Garner might suffer cardiac arrest. On the other hand, whether or not Pantaleo's intentions were innocuous, the fact remains that he employed a incapacitation technique that was prohibited by the New York Police Department, I presume, for the very reason that its use might lead to precisely the sort of situation in which asphyxiation of a suspect under a chokehold might lead to the suspect's death, as it did here. At the very least, Officer Pantaleo must face departmental reprimand, if not outright dismissal, for grossly violating operating instructions mandated by the New York Police Department and, as a result, contributing to the death of a suspect in his custody.
On the other hand, a violation of departmental operating instructions is not equivalent to a criminal violation, subject to indictment and prosecution. If, to some extent, police officers deserve some greater deference against criminal prosecution for their actions if their actions lead to the involuntary death of a suspect, then the grand jury should have attached some significance on the fact that the use of a chokehold violated departmental procedures intended to protect the lives of unarmed suspects subdued by officers. It would seem that the grand jury must have concluded that any effort to subdue Mr. Garner would have endangered his life in view of his underlying health conditions, even if Pantaleo and his colleagues had strictly followed departmental procedures. As such, the critical consideration for the grand jury was the fact that Mr. Garner was asthmatic and suffered from various precipitating conditions for heart disease. Had the onus been placed on Officer Pantaleo's use of a prohibited incapacitation technique, then, I presume, it would have been much more likely that he would have been indicted for involuntary manslaughter, against which New York prosecutors would have been compelled to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Office Pantaleo inadvertently and negligently created circumstances in which Mr. Garner's life would have been placed in danger.
Again, however, the larger issue here, as in the case of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, concerns the particular methodologies used by law enforcement authorities in interacting with minority communities. A broader reconsideration of the organization and operations of police forces, as they relate to African-American, Hispanic, and other communities is needed here. That is to say, if, at a facial level, grand juries in St. Louis and New York City made the right calls in adjudicating the circumstances involved in the deaths of two African-American suspects, then it reveals the extent to which the larger problem evident in the relationships between majority White police forces and majority Black neighborhood communities transcends individual incidents. It demands revolutionary change that will, first, transform the resources that police forces can utilize to interact with non-White communities in enforcing law and, second, transform the nature of democratic control utilized by local communities over police departments to ensure that the use of police power will continuously support and advance the interests of community as a whole, not to the exclusion of low income or racially defined groups.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
The Rams Should NOT Apologize to the St. Louis County Police Department
I still have to complete the larger argument in my previous post (see "The Battle of Ferguson" at: http://boycottcorporatemedia.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-battle-of-ferguson.html), but this very brief post simply stands to make the argument that the St. Louis Rams organization need not apologize for the actions of certain of its players, standing in solidarity with the African-American community of nearby Ferguson by emerging from their locker room conveying the same "hands up, don't shoot" protest against police uttered in Ferguson. More emphatically, many, many more professional athletes in the U.S. should, I hope, stand in solidarity with the local communities around which they stand, afflicted by violence inflicted by civil law enforcement authorities. Rather than concede that violence against African-American, Hispanic, and other minority communities at the hands of overwhelmingly White police forces is simply a matter of fact, a handful of Rams players on Sunday declared that it was a matter of political debate and deliberation. This is as it should be and, should the Rams' organization choose to make an example of the players who acted in solidarity with Ferguson, then they should be boycotted! It is critical, at this volatile moment in U.S. history, that we, as a population, enter into debate on the status of non-White minority groups, particularly in relation to criminal justice/law enforcement practices. To this extent, I stand with those members of the Rams and with all other professional athletes that choose to make the argument that what is happening in Ferguson and in many other communities in the U.S. is not right and needs desperately to be remedied in the name of democracy and justice for non-White minorities against the racial prejudices of those in power and those who have conferred on them the authority to legislate and administer laws in a manner that disproportionately impacts minority communities.
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