How to protect and serve
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This week’s question comes from me, actually:
How do we protect and serve our community?
Last Monday, I joined somewhere between five and ten thousand people (depending on who you believe, I am not good at crowd sizes) at 24th and Mission to protest ICE raids. I wanted to march. I wanted to hear what neighborhood leaders had to say. I was hoping that if enough people gathered we could convince municipal leaders to act. I wanted to let the federal government know that kidnapping our friends and neighbors wouldn’t be easy. I’m guessing the other people who gathered there had similar reasons to be there, but I don’t want to speak for them. Mostly I wanted to help.
That’s a lie.
Mostly I was scared.
Yeah, mostly I was scared. I’m still scared. I’m scared that masked thugs are kidnapping my neighbors. I’m scared that masked thugs will eventually start kidnapping my friends and family. And if we’re being honest, being in the middle of a crowd, who most likely was feeling the same way, was a bit of a reprieve from being terrified. There is solace in crowds. There is safety in crowds. There’s power in crowds. There’s the knowing that among these people, at least for a few hours, I am among people who care about me as much as I care about them. There’s the knowing that common cause has brought us together, if temporarily, to fight an evil that is bigger than the disagreements that I’m sure we all had before we gathered as a crowd. Those same disagreements that will re-emerge once we’re no longer part of this crowd. For now, though we are a crowd. We are united in wanting to protect each other. We are united in wanting to protect and to serve our community.
In 1955, the Los Angeles police department had a contest to select a motto for the department. The winning slogan was submitted by one of their own, Joseph S. Dorobek. That slogan, “To Protect and to Serve”, has since been adopted by police forces around the country, including San Francisco. You’ll see it on SFPD black and white vehicles, in a friendly script, usually over the rear fender. People of Los Angeles can see it on both the driver and passenger doors of LAPD vehicles. Amazingly it’s in quotes. “To protect and to serve.”
As the crowd gathered at 24th and Mission, I saw people looking around to see who else was in the crowd. Some of them were looking for friends, no doubt. But I think people also just wanted to see who else was there. I looked around too. I saw the face of San Francisco. I saw working people. I saw poor people. Rich people. Old punks. New punks. Hippies. I saw a couple of people I recognized in passing from record stores, cafés, markets, and just from walking around in a city which isn’t actually very big. I saw white people, Black people, Latinx people, Asian people. There were Mexican flags, Palestinian flags, Pride flags, Brazilian flags, flags I ignorantly didn’t recognize, and one hero with a sign that said “I drink my horchata warm because fuck ICE.” And as cheesy and cliché as this might sound, these are the people I think of when I think of San Francisco at its best.
As we marched down Mission Street chanting stuff and holding signs in various languages, I noticed that people living above the stores on Mission were looking out their windows and standing on their balconies waving at the crowd. They waved at the crowd and people in the crowd waved back. And I realized these were most likely folks who couldn’t be down in the crowd for reasons. These were the people we were protecting and serving. I imagined these people leaving their apartments every day to go to work, or their kids leaving their apartments every day to go to school not knowing if that was the day they’d be kidnapped and disappeared by masked fascist thugs. It’s a brutal thing.
I realized that in America, there are so many reasons why parents might hold their children tight when they send them off to school. And we keep adding to that.
As the crowd turned off Mission Street, onto 16th, and made another left on Valencia, we soon found ourselves face to face with the Mission Police station. The station was barricaded. Between the station and the barricades were cops in military armor, carrying military gear. 17th Street was also blocked off between Valencia and Guerrero, with a few dozen cops stationed there. I passed the front door and saw a few dozen more cops inside the lobby, all in riot gear. And for the first time that evening I thought there would be violence. A threat of violence I never felt as we gathered at 24th and Mission, listening to community leaders give speeches about why we were marching. A threat of violence I never felt as we walked down Mission Street waving at our neighbors in windows and balconies. A threat of violence I never felt as we walked down Valencia and people in bars and restaurants came out to chant along with us. A threat of violence I never felt as those who were actually protecting and serving their community were protecting and serving their community.
I only felt the threat of violence when I was face to face with violence workers.
San Francisco is currently facing a budget deficit of almost $800 million dollars. Yet Mayor Lurie’s budget proposal has a 6% increase for the SFPD. There was a similar increase the year before. There is always money for more cops. There is always more money for things you want there to be more money for. There is never enough money for things you don’t want there to be enough money for, like low-income housing or treatment centers.
To protect and to serve whom?
I was close enough to the armored cops that I could see their faces. I could see a mix of terror and anger, which is a fucked up combination to see in someone’s face when they’re holding murder weapons. Some were definitely angrier than others. Some were trying to hold their shit together. Some were itching to start some shit. I’m guessing more than a few cop bladders failed to hold the line. None of them were standing there, in full military armor with the intent to protect or serve. They were there to provoke and intimidate. If they were there to protect a community the barricades made it very clear where the boundaries of their community were.
If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy books, it’s fair to assume they want to educate you. If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy coats, it’s fair to assume they want to clothe you. If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy groceries, it’s fair to assume they want to feed you. If you increase a department’s funding by 6% and they buy a tank, it’s fair to assume they want to murder you.
To protect and to serve whom? Earlier this month, the SFPD accepted a billionaire’s gift of $9.4 million for surveillance equipment. “We’re going to be covering the entire city with drones,” said Captain Thomas MacGuire. The billionaire, Chris Larsen, is also the founder of the San Francisco Police Community Foundation, whose website proudly proclaims that their goal is to “improve the quality of life for all San Francisco police officers.” Cool. (Personally, I’d be more concerned with the wellness of cops’ domestic partners.) Amazingly, my neo-liberal neighbors are able to ignore over 200 years of American history and say things like “The police will never fire on our own people.” Either that, or they’re very confident in the phrase “our own people” which just made every parent who’s ever had to have that talk with their children roll their eyes permanently to the back of their head. The SFPD has made it very clear who is and who isn’t “their own people” as well as the price of entry for getting on the right side of that list. Chris Larsen is on it. He is protected, he will be served. The people marching in front of the Mission Police Station on Monday are not. They will be hunted.
There’s a common belief among the red-pilled MAGA crowd that the people causing all this disruption and mayhem in American cities are paid actors. And here I’ll throw them a bone—they are correct. They’re just looking at the wrong people. The people causing the disruption and mayhem in our streets are paid out of city budgets, with seemingly bottomless overtime allowances and billionaire gifts, and the cover of elected officials.
San Francisco is a sanctuary city, as is Los Angeles. Which means that city resources are prevented from aiding ICE in immigration sweeps and kidnappings. City resources include the police. The job of the police, which is stated on every black and white vehicle is “to protect and serve.” One would think that means to protect and serve the community. The people. And one would hope that protection and service would be allocated to those that need it most. On Monday, we saw the people marching to protect and serve those in our community that needed us. If the SFPD is there to protect and serve they would’ve been marching with us, not barricaded and armored and wielding weapons against. We should not be afraid that those who are paid to “protect and serve us” want to murder us.
San Francisco is a sanctuary. Los Angeles is a sanctuary.
The people are the sanctuary.
We protect and serve each other.
❤️🩹 Sending love from the people of SF to the people of LA.
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