From Cairo to New York, Which Side Are Police On?

By Michelle Chen
In These Times
November 1, 2011

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12205/from_cairo_to_new_york_which_side_are_the_police_on/

As the Arab Spring enters a tense autumn chill, Tahrir Square
remains a fiery political battleground, where struggles
between the people and the state constantly churn and
redefinine themselves. When police officers went on strike in
October, they raised hard questions about the position of the
public sector in the struggle against counterrevolution.

Thousands of Egypt’s police, though tarnished by the shameful
violence deployed by security forces during the January 25
uprising, are now staging their own revolt. Meanwhile, the
military brass, initially lauded in the early days of the
revolution when it refrained from crushing demonstrators on
behalf of Mubarak’s dictatorship, have become the target of
public vitriol. The chaos - part of a continual wave of
strikes, demonstrations and crackdowns- illustrates the
people’s growing bitterness at the hijacking of their
revolution by a reactionary junta.Cops are broadly defined as
public servants, but when the state is attacking the
citizenry, including its own employees, which  'public ' is
represented in popular struggles for civil rights, a living
wage, or accountable government? 

So are the cops defecting to join the rabble? The momentum
comes from struggling rank-and-file officers who actively
distance themselves from the corrupt interim regime and
notoriously cruel Interior Ministry. Alongside basic bread-
and-butter grievances about wages and working conditions -
the crux of all the strikes that have rocked the country this
year - there are calls for an internal overhaul to restore
the integrity and credibility of the institution.

According to one news report:

Police said they would hold an open ended sit-in until their
demands were met, as around 12 000 went on strike. Egypt has
350 000 police altogether.

Some of the officers at the protest waved banners reading
"Good treatment equals better service."

Another banner called for "Purging the ministry of the mafia
and the remnants of el-Adly," a reference to former Interior
Minister Habib el-Adly, who is on trial for deadly police
attacks on unarmed protesters during the uprising that
toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Although the opposition was initially galvanized by the
images of security forces cracking down on peaceful
protesters, the new face of dictatorship seems to be the
military, which has led arrests and prosecutions of civilian
activists. The situation has grown more tense in the wake of
sectarian clashes that many accuse the military of using as a
pretext to consolidate power and target enemies.

The actions of the police strikers touches on a key question
in any labor conflict involving public safety agencies: which
side are they on? Cops are broadly defined as public
servants, but when the state is attacking the citizenry,
including its own employees, which "public" is represented in
popular struggles for civil rights, a living wage, or
accountable government?

In Wisconsin last February, amid massive protests against
Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on public workers’ collective
bargaining rights, many police officers allied with the
demonstrators. The surprising show of solidarity defied
lawmakers’ attempts to split the public workforce by
shielding safety officers and firefighters from harshest
provisions of the anti-union legislation.

In the Occupy Wall Street movements, the position of the
police has again been called into question: are they tools of
a tyrannical state or ordinary folks trying to make a living?
Their position as public-sector workers contrasts with the
the cruelty and corruption they’ve come to represent, but is
the people-vs.-cops binary too simplistic for a movement that
aims for maximum inclusiveness?

Filmmaker Michael Moore has aired a video (apparently popular
on right-wing websites) urging local police to join the
Occupy movements. Ironically, Moore drew a parallel with the
non-intervening Egyptian military forces (an image that
clearly no longer applies today, except for the handful of
activist officers who’ve risked severe punishment to defy
their superiors.)

Meanwhile in the U.S. demonstrations, veterans of occupations
of a different sort have found common cause with the anti-
capitalist protesters. But the tragic case of Scott Olsen
shows that service members are as vulnerable as any citizen
to the ruthless hostility of the government’s foot soldiers.

Following mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge, an Occupy
activist argued in Liberation that the authoritarian nature
of the profession commits police to enforcing the structures
of oppression:

...while cops as individuals are not part of the ruling
class, they cannot be considered part of the oppressed
classes either...They are an arm of the ruling class, whose
function in society is to maintain the rule of the rich over
all of us....

Rank-and-file soldiers in the military, who typically serve
only for a few years, have at several key historical moments
defected, torn off their uniforms, and switched back to the
workers’ side in large numbers. Professional police officers,
who have chosen to join that institution of repression as
their life’s work, almost never do....

In city after city, occupations are being confronted by
police violence and harassment. In some places, the police
have already shut them down. We have to learn from these
experiences. If cops want to be considered part of the 99%,
there is only one way: by quitting their jobs as the
enforcers of the 1%.

But now shift the lens to post-revolutionary Egypt, where
police are not as comfortably ensconced in hierarchies of
social privilege, and massive unrest has permeated all
sectors of society as the "new" authorities brazenly betray
the spirit of January 25. The counterrevolution has permeated
not only government but civil society as well, as even some
union leaders are reportedly siding with military authorities
by restraining strike activity.

Have Egypt’s rank-and-file police chosen, as public servants,
to defend the people over the corrupt elite? How deep does
their solidarity run, especially if the state continues to
monopolize armed violence? The striking police could just be
cynical political operators, or a symptom of a general
collapse of Egypt’s social edifice. But their action
nonetheless challenges activists everywhere to rethink the
meaning of "public security" in times of revolution.

© 2011 In These Times

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