The Ruling Class, the[ir] NYPD, the New School and Broken Windows
BHASKAR SUNKARA
Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities was an influential urban sociological work published in 1996 (though the theory dates back to the early ’80s). Its authors, George L. Kelling and Catherine Coles, conjectured about how best to confront and eliminate crime in urban areas.
The theory states that if petty crime and other minor “anti-social” behavior isn’t aggressively curbed then it will escalate into major crime and/or a serious public nuisance.
[…] consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.
The solution is the fix problems when they are small and barely pose a threat. New York City became a laboratory for these strategies during the 1990s under Rudi Giuliani. “Zero tolerance” became the ruling class’ mantra of the day— subway fare hopping, public drinking/urinating, being homeless, [being a person of color…] meant you were in serious trouble with the NYPD no matter how trivial your crime might be.
The city’s crime did decrease during the 1990s, but most reputable scholars place the onus for this decrease on the end of the crack epidemic, or more dubiously the legalization of abortion decades earlier. (The theory is still in vogue and is being applied in every corner of public administration.)
I could go on for much longer, but this post isn’t about crime, its about how a hundred plus NYPD officers within hours of the New School [re]occupation stormed the building with tear gas and mace, surrounded the streets, broke up the solidarity protest with excessive force and erected barriers to contain onlookers with almost military precision.
At a time when New York City’s hospitals are being forced into making serious layoffs and cuts, there appears to be money for a one billion dollar police academy. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. “Law and order” is more important for stable class rule than public health at the moment.
The “shocking and aweing” of the New School students wasn’t just a plan concocted by the NYPD and the school’s embattled administration this morning, these tactics were thought of months in advance. The plutocrat Bloomberg and the rest of the city’s ruling class has made it clear today that just as this “Great Recession” has exposed many of the natural tendencies of capital and the true speculative nature of the finance bourgeoisie, this crisis will also expose the true mission of our “public” police forces and much of our state machinery—to “preserve and protect”… property.
A small sit-in like the one at the New School warranted an inundating use of the ruling class’ favorite repressive apparatus—the police, whereas the last New School occupation saw a far less militarized NYPD interdiction (and ended with a somewhat successful negotiation). Remember the surprisingly favorable and widespread coverage the Republic Windows occupation got in the mainstream media? The NYU students and New School students certainly did not get that and the Stella workers have gotten nothing but apathy from the mainstream media (which is probably worse).
Activists need to see the example of the New School occupation and acknowledge that the stakes have been raised. Sit-ins can’t just spontaneously happen without significant support, they need strong organization, solidarity actions and most difficultly (and importantly) the bridging of the gap between organized labor and the small-but-militant vanguard of the student movement.
Democratic socialist students do not have the aversion for direct action that many liberals do, we don’t over romanticize direct action like many of our anarchist comrades do, and we don’t have the political baggage and the sectarianism that many “Marxist-Leninist” outfits have. Our position in the movement must be to encourage radical student groups to develop stronger ties with other segments of the radical movement. Where was the large contingent of radical New School students and New York University students at the Wall Street demonstrations last week? Were those syndicalist students proudly waving that resplendent black and red flag on the roof the occupied building at any of the solidarity marches for the Stella workers? They might have been there, but I doubt it. I’m not patronizing– I wasn’t there either, but I was out there to support my friends and peers during the NYU occupation. The true irony is that many student activists, including myself, complain that too much of organized labor only cares about bread and butter issues and lack a broad class consciousness, while we often fall into these same traps.
New School supporters got 200+ people out there quickly at 10pm to demand the release of the 22 arrested students, but could they have mobilized 200 people after the NYPD shot dead Sean Bell?
Our movement needs to build some bridges quick, both expanding the radical student movement through the work of organizations like YDS, SDS, the YCL and others, and also by reaching out to the broader left. It seems like major events— like the Battle of Seattle, the 1968 DNC protests, etc etc, just happen, and to an extent spontaneity does play a role, but these events are more often than not the culmination of months of planning, networking and organizing. We need to play this game to win— to paraphrase the great Saul Alinsky, “We can’t just yell, kill the umpire!”
To my fellow student radicals— we’re just a few shards of broken glass in a country where the capitalist class seems like the only organized group of class warriors on the scene, but the landlords are awful nervous at the moment and will do whatever they can to sweep us up. Let’s do what we have to do—even the unglamorous, laborious work, so that in a little bit we have a chance, even if that prospect is fleeting and almost non-existent, to really “occupy everything right now”.
Great article! Are you in New York these days? For some reason I thought you were based in DC. -Micah
I am (I go to GWU), but I’m a New York native so I’m up here fairly often during the year and during the summer.
Going to Left Forum, in that case?
“Where was the large contingent of radical New School students and New
York University students at the Wall Street demonstrations last week?
Were those syndicalist students proudly waving that resplendent black
and red flag on the roof the occupied building at any of the solidarity
marches for the Stella workers? They might have been there, but I doubt
it. I’m not patronizing– I wasn’t there either, but I was out there to
support my friends and peers during the NYU occupation.”
I think you’ve missed the point – endless marches against endless problems is part of the politics the occupations reject. It’s about means as well as ends – the ‘march’, the demonstration, the calls to action – all of it is just so much fodder for the news cameras and the myth of democratic self-expression. Occupation represents a kind of politics that immediately realizes your goals and turns the labor of students into a weapon against the institutions that need them. You want to demonstrate against something else – we want to demonstrate that we already have power and will use it.
Your views make sense on a certain level, and I’ll engage with those thoughts and the similar thoughts of those that emailed me (all were polite and cordial, I must say), have you ever read “Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism – An Unbridgeable Chasm”. It’s here if you haven’t: http://libcom.org/library/social-anarchism–lifestyle-anarchism-murray-bookchin. Let me know what you thought of that work. I’ve heard European “libertarians” complain about the American anarchist movement and the trends that have marginalized it over the years.
Excuse my “glibness”; i’ll reply in depth later.
I’m all for sit-ins and occupations when there is a clear and attainable goal that the occupiers are advancing, but this latest New School occupation (and the one at NYU a few weeks back) have been nothing but unmitigated disasters. Does anyone in the general public even know what the purpose of the occupation was? In all likelihood, these students are perceived as a bunch of whiny, privileged kids at some fancy private school playacting at revolution. And unfortunately, I don’t think this perception is really all that far off the mark. Perhaps these experiences will help student movements in the city and elsewhere learn from the mistakes that have been made so that they can be more effective in the future, but I would suggest we put down the red and black flags, the bandanas, and the hyperbolic rhetoric and build an actual movement that draws support from a wide base of students and doesn’t make a fetish of a particular tactic, i.e. occupation.
I’m somewhere in between the ultra-leftists and your stance Chris. I don’t think that occupations should be used as merely a means to a specific end, I think that in principle if the actions had enough support around them and were widespread enough, they could be catalysts for a broader movement. There’s a lot to be done before we can get to the point where that is possible. And American anarchism is probably never going to get to that point — too much “lifestylism”, too much distrust for organization, and other faults that they are not indicative of the movement in Europe and in its history in America.