listen - i know better than to conflate media reports of street movements with the views of people on the ground. there's no uniformity of thought in these movements; it's a collection of individuals with widely varying goals, and a general aversion to the status quo. it will run the spectrum from conservatives driven by some concept of morality to left-anarchists that want to burn the churches and banks down. as you know, i am on the very far left of this spectrum, but i'm sure i could find a clique of like-minded people if i went looking for them.

but, i have no interest in involving myself in the politics of race, or in the politics of religion, for that matter. this is not a healthy direction for the protest movement - it's going to end up looking like the iranian revolution, in the end, if we continue down this path. and, these foucauldians will get what they want. i consider this to be relabeled burkeanism, and i don't support any of it.

i would expect that if i were to go down on the ground and talk to people, it would only be a vocal minority of people that i'd find myself in any kind of serious disagreement with. i'd have broad levels of agreement with most of the people about what they're angry about, even if my prescriptions are well to the left of theirs. so, we might agree that there's a problem in the behaviour of the police, and then very adamantly disagree on what the cause of the problem is, and how to fix it, although some of the messaging in the media seems encouraging - it does seem as though there are more voices calling for police and prison abolition, and less voices calling for retribution or incrementalism, than i would have thought, based on the reports i've seen. i can't know what is happening around me without directly investigating, but, as mentioned, i'm not interested in doing it - i will wait this out, and reinvolve myself when the narrative switches back towards class. and, it will; there is no revolutionary potential or political future in the politics of race. it just reinforces the status quo.

the vocal minority that i'm going to disagree with the most are the group pushing neo-liberal identity politics, that essentially want to argue for a fairer playing field so that everybody can compete against each other more efficiently. these people (who are liberals, not leftists) show up at every left-wing protest, and try and dominate and control it, and somebody always has to stand up against them, which i've done in the past, but cannot do, in context - we need black voices to do this, this time. that's the trick the capitalists are using, here. the capitalist press will present these neo-liberals as the crux of the movement, because it reinforces the neo-liberal paradigm (look! the protesters just want the same thing as the banks do! they just want it faster. so, there is no movement.), but i do know better - i realize that it's just a small percentage of self-identified "leaders", who are largely being directed by or actually are undercover cops. the vast majority of the people assembled are well to the left of that.

i just can't be the person that shows up to this and makes these arguments, because the thing is designed to attack me for doing it. the moment that i uncover the charade for what it is, i'll get targeted as a racist. the thing is erected that way, and there's no escape from it.

i've tried to point out things, like burning the police station, that are more in line with a politics i can support, as a leftist. but, this is, broadly, a step backwards from occupy, in terms of political direction. i saw this coming; i think a lot of people did. it has to run it's course...

as a (mostly) white person, i just have to stand back and let the black voices work this out on their own. when they've worked this out, and want to get back to building a broad-based leftist political movement based around class, rather than a neo-liberal movement based around race, they can let me know.

i'm still waiting for the economy to fall, myself. this is not a lumpenproletariat; it's mostly a middle class movement. and, they just want a fairer playing field, to compete on. i don't particularly disagree, but it's not revolutionary in character. it's reactionary. it's conservative...