Polder till death (a few reflections on the NYE demo)
A few reflections on the demo at Schiphol on the 31st of December 2015
This text can only begin by saying that we are very happy everyone is out and that this spectacle at least for now does not seem to have heavy consequences for anyone. However, there is a need for reflection – not only on the behaviour of the police, because this unfortunately does and did not surprise us in any way, but also on the way in which we and those around us have acted in the midst of it. Why were we there? For us, this question can be answered in the most simplistic of terms: we were there because we are in solidarity with people that are locked up, here and everywhere else, with or without papers. We were there because prison and the system behind it disgusts us and we want to destroy it. We were there because we want to put solidarity into practice, instead of having it remain an empty slogan that can be used without thinking about its meaning.
What is solidarity? For us, solidarity is not just standing in front of a prison on New Years Eve shouting slogans to make the people inside feel a little less miserable. It is also sticking together in moments of stress, whether the cause of the situation is one you agree with or not. It is making it clear to the cops that there is a clear line between them and us, that they are our enemies.
It is definitely not siding with the cops, parroting their demands, attempting to participate in the arrest of people by asking “those who did this” to make themselves known. You cannot speak of solidarity and then demand that people hand themselves over to the police. To state that those who wrote on the vehicles belonging to the guards should turn themselves in, “step forward now”, is not only mimicking the dirty tricks the cops tried to play on us (dividing a group of people in the “good” and the “bad”) but also following the line of thought of domination, in coherence with a system that locks people up because they did something “bad”. For us, this yearly demonstration is not only in solidarity with people that are locked up, that is to say all people locked up, not just immigrants, but also a clear statement against prisons in general. We are against prison, we are against anyone being locked up. Putting certain people in prison will not prevent others from being arrested. Only after the cops had admitted that “those responsible” handing themselves over did not imply that everyone else could go, people let go of this idea and the witch-hunt that came with it. In other words, people trusted the cops. We do not understand this. They are our enemies and we do not want to enter in a dialogue with our enemies. For us it is incomprehensible and unacceptable that people seemed to be willing to help the cops, sided with their demands and believed whatever they said. This is dangerous and naive.
It needs to be clear that the only ones responsible for this situation are the cops and the system they serve. To state that those who wrote on the vehicles are responsible for the locking up and possible deportation of the immigrants present at the demo is speaking the language of our enemies, a discourse that divides people based on assumed innocence and guilt or legality and illegality. This perspective disables any possibility of agency on the part of the immigrants present. It assumes that “the immigrants” do not have any individual choice, cannot for themselves make the decision whether to participate in a demo that may or may not involve risks. This is a citizenist, leftist approach, for which all those who leave in search of something else are poor, helpless creatures that need to be saved. To be an immigrant does not imply you cannot fight against and attack the world that oppresses you, whether in the country you left from or the one you have arrived in. Oppression is everywhere – but those who fight it are as well. In other words, everyone always has a choice.
Moreover, if it had not been for people writing on cars, they could have found another excuse to harass and possibly arrest us. It should not be forgotten that this demonstration had not been announced – something the servants of the state generally do not appreciate very much. If it had not been the markers – something they used as an excuse, which was then mindlessly believed by some – they would have come up with something else; fireworks that were too loud or thrown against the wall, people being partly masked, or simply the fact that the demo had not been announced. When you do not ask permission but take what you want you can expect these kind of things to happen, you cannot expect or promise that a demonstration like this will undoubtedly be “safe”. We are not saying that this situation was inevitable, only that it should have been taken in account. The fact that cars were written on was merely a good opportunity for the cops to do what they had probably been wanting to do anyway. It should not be forgotten that, as much as they are our enemies, we are their enemies as well. Even if some people had turned themselves in, they would have still tried to arrest everyone, to identify everyone present at the demo and collect as much data as possible. Why would they arrest a handful of people for writing on a car – this is writing some slogans on vehicles, not murder – if they could get their hands on information concerning over a hundred people?
And, perhaps a more interesting question: why did we let them get away with it? Why did we wait? The idea that we could have had any influence on the situation by negotiating with them or partly obeying their demands has been proven untrue so many times that by now we should know better. Once the cops were there the moment of negotiating was already over, it was them deciding what would happen next, not us. Some people however did not wait, and managed to get away during the moments of chaos that were created. However uncertain the outcome of a moment of chaos, of a breakout attempt, we should never forget that even in situations like these we do have some agency.
However unlikely they may seem sometimes – for example being on a military terrain practically surrounded by cops carrying machine guns – the possibilities are always there. In this specific situation it would have been nice to try out this possibility at an earlier stage; perhaps more people could have gotten away, perhaps it might have just shown a clearer attitude towards the cops, discouraging them a little in the assumption that they have complete power and control over us.
This is not – not only – about immigrants, this is about all of us who get fucked over by this alienating system on a daily basis. We understand that for some people present at the demo the risks of being arrested weighed heavier in the sense that the arrest could have bigger consequences than for others. We do not deny this and once more, we are really happy that everyone is out. However, it needs to be repeated that no one except the cops is responsible for what happened – putting the blame for whatever consequences this night had or will have on anyone else is nothing but finding excuses for the behaviour of the cops in the wrong places. They are cops – this is what they do. This is precisely the reason why we do not feel inclined to lament their behaviour, to make formal or legal complaints about the way they treated us, for this implies entering in a dialogue with the state and thus refining their projects of repression. We are not interested in this: being beaten less hard still means being beaten. We want to fight all the facets of repression, whether they come in the obvious form of a cop with a machine gun or the less obvious form of a legal system that promises you “justice”. And this fight is one that everyone, with our without papers, can participate in – this is not about saving people or being vanguards, this is about fighting together against our common enemies.
Some anarchists