The Ends of Resistance by Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin

Author:Alix Olson and Alex Zamalin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

SUBJECTS OF SURVEILLANCE

Over the next decade, this escalating strategy of social control in the United States was augmented by the rise of more technically proficient modes of securitization already familiar to populations subjugated by U.S. empire. The targeted surveillance of activists (understood as threats to the political, economic, and social order) was not in itself new. In the 1970s the federal government had put counterinsurgency strategies (acquired through years of fighting against North Viet Cong guerrillas during the Vietnam War) to work against radical resistance movements. The FBI trained local law enforcement to infiltrate and surveil organizations like the Black Panthers, SDS, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) Brown Berets, and Young Lords. But after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, domestic surveillance reached new heights as counterinsurgency practices— putatively born to fight the “War on Terror”—were codified into law under the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Under the guise of public safety, efficiency, and national security, and amid the shock of a “national emergency,” the Patriot Act offered the government unchecked power to spy on and access records of U.S. citizens without “reasonable suspicion.” It also created a new crime of “domestic terrorism,” which it defined as conduct that attempts to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” In effect, the Patriot Act converted all transformative resistance movements into potential terrorists and criminals.

The post-9/11 period also saw a drastic escalation in the militarization of local, state, and federal police departments. This transformation has its own decades-long history related to the quashing of political unrest, including the 1960’s rise of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) units, developed by the Los Angeles Police Department in response to the 1965 antiracist Watts uprisings and first unleashed against the Black Panthers in 1969, and, the “1033 Program” signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996, which permanently authorized the Department of Defense to transfer “excess” weapons of war to law enforcement agencies in the name of “counterterrorism.” But it was under George W. Bush (and then Barack Obama) that the program’s declared mission, “from war-fighter to crime-fighter,” went into full effect. Between 2006 and 2014, police around the country amassed an arsenal of $1.5 billion of military-grade weaponry (intended for use in the wars waged in Afghanistan and Iraq). During this time, police were not only trained in using a counterterrorism approach but were also sent on exchange programs with Israeli police forces trained in using a similar approach.28

This fusion of sophisticated surveillance strategies and militarized police tactics would be quickly put to work in preempting and overwhelming public acts of defiance. This was evident during the violent state-sponsored crackdown on the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, protests against rampant economic inequality and transnational corporate power that began in New York City’s Zuccotti Park (in the Wall Street district) and surged around the globe. In 2012, FBI documents (obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund) revealed that an intensely coordinated surveillance campaign of Occupy had begun one month before its establishing encampments.

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