BLOCK HIS ASS š«
| PROTEST | On snappy slogans and political streetwear in
How is everyone doing? Iām, eh, not-so-greatā¦ slowly withering without the cathartic ritual of ravingāI know yaāll can relate! Everyone keeps talking about how much they miss nightlife, but maybe Iāve succumbed to pandemic agoraphobia; when I think about rubbing my body against other sweaty slabs of meat, my stomach churns with visceral disgust. What I do missāwhatās really killing meāis the relief of dancefloor ego dissolution, that feeling of escaping my mind-prison and disappearing into a dark, throbbing womb.
So on Wednesday, when I found myself lying on the floor in a ketamine puddle again, I decided this self-medication fantasy wasnāt really cutting it, and I was going to return to another uplifting ritual centered around the collective spirit: GOING TO A PROTEST. Beyond escaping the abyss of depression, I was also interested in the place of Black Lives Matter protests under the Biden administrationās new political realignment, especially with Obama talking so much shit about ādefund the policeāāwhich he recently dismissed as a āsnappy slogan.ā As Biden continues to fill his Cabinet with his Obama-era cronies, prioritizing personal friendships and superficial identity politics over policy and experienceāhow is the progressive left responding?
(While Biden and Kamala ran on the promise of āreturning to normal,ā I am reminded of what a leader of the George Floyd autonomous zone told me about normalcy: āWeāre not going to let the city removes barricades and open the streets back up so that life can go back to normalābecause ānormalā isnāt OK.ā)
Here in LA, Black Lives Matter has been protesting outside Mayor Garcettiās mansion every single morning for the last two weeks-ish. Their aim is to #BlockGarcetti from getting nominated to Bidenās incoming Cabinet, where he was reportedly being considered as either Secretary of Housing or Transportation. Protestors are adamantly against this, citing the mayorās refusal to defund the LAPD, as well as his failure in handling LAās homelessness crisis, as reasons why he should not be allowed to āfail upward.ā
Last Sunday, those protests erupted into a violent attack by police, with videos going viral of officers beating protestors with batons. (The LAPD responded in a press statement that they were attempting to arrest someone for using a bullhorn, which is a fucking jokeāanyone whoās been to a recent protest ever knows that non-permitted sound amplification devices are everywhere.) This obviously inflamed the protests even more, and a surge of new supporters have been showing up every morning since then. A petition to #BlockGarcetti has also almost reached its goal of 7,000 signatures.
Hereās a particularly intense video of the attack:
In spite of the public outrage over these videos, Biden announced the very next day that he was appointing Garcetti as co-chair of his inauguration committeeāa tone-deaf decision that suggested that either the protests werenāt really having an effect, or Biden just didnāt care?
Then, on Tuesday, something even crazier happened: news broke that Biden was passing over Garcetti and tapping Rep. Marcia Fudge for the role of Housing Secretaryāchoosing a black woman to preside over the worsening housing crisis in a pretty blatant act of tokenism, or what progressive critics are calling an act of ādiversity theater.ā Fudge had zero interest in the job, and had lobbied for a different role leading the Agriculture Department, where she actually has experience and knows her shit. (Instead, Biden picked Big Ag lobbyist Tom Vilsack for that position.)
In The Intercept, Vanessa A. Bee responded:
"The progress feels shallow. Black and brown faces are being crudely shifted across a limited number of Cabinet spots to fulfill the primary goal: the ability to boast, as President-elect Joe Biden has begun to, 'the most diverse Cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced.'"
OK maybe all this Cabinet-speak is getting a little boring and convoluted, sorry. Essentially this sign from the Garcetti protests sums up what you need to know:
So on Wednesday morning, I woke up at the crack of dawn (*8am, but close enough for a sordid vampire like me) and cruised over to the Mayorās house. This time, there was not a single cop in sightāclearly, the Mayor had decided that Sundayās attack was a political miscalculation. Instead, I arrived to the pungent scent of burning sage and incense. Invoking ancient Native American and African spiritual practicesāsuch as pouring libations and calling the names of ancestorsāis a distinctive ritual that often kicks off protests in Los Angeles, and always helps me to remember that Black Lives Matter is, at its core, a spiritual movement.
The mood that morning was jubilantāprotestors were claiming the news that Garcetti had been passed over for Secretary of Housing as a victory, and a sign that the protests were working.
āGARCETTI IS DIRTY AS MUD, WE BLOCKED HIS ASS FROM HUD!ā they chanted, dancing to the clanging of cowbells and makeshift drums. (This was the first time Iāve danced next to strangers in public in a long ass time, and despite my earlier claims of agoraphobiaā¦ it felt good.)
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Then BLM leader Melina Abdullah hopped on the bullhorn. āI want to share an important piece of data that just came out,ā she said, referring to a new study of 1,800 Angelenos, commissioned by the LAPD and conducted by Loyola Marymount University. āWhen 62% of people in the city are saying to defund police and use it for social programs, our message is getting out and making sense,ā Abdullah proclaimed. āWE ARE WINNING!ā The crowd erupted in cheers.
(Later, I dug into this survey more and found the results to be less clear cut. Yes, ~62% of respondents supported redirecting money from police to social programs. But 63% were opposed to abolishing the police, and nearly two-thirds said they felt the LAPD was doing a good job. Soā¦ ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ?)
Anyway Iām sorry that Iām such a hypebeast fuccboi slave to fashion, but as I made my way further into the crowd, I couldnāt help but notice all the PROTEST LEWKS that people were wearing. I donāt remember seeing this much BLM merch when protests erupted earlier this year, but when I went to DC a few months ago, the streets were lined with booths selling racial justice-themed T-shirts, hats, flags, etc. Today, many of the leaders could be identified by their official Black Lives Matter hoodies and face masks.
This dude standing at the entrance of the Mayorās gate had strong Detroit Techno Militia / Underground Resistance vibes:
I also thought this punk dudeās leather jacket with ā99%ā scrawled on its sleeve was v sick:
As someone pointed out to me on Twitter, this white woman wearing a ādecolonizerā face mask while clutching her pup is PEAK 2020.
And of course this wouldnāt be a proper streetwear detour without an HBA sighting:
Then I spotted this shirt with a quote by civil rights activist and writer Audre Lordāand because obvi we stan self-care as streetwear, I started chatting with the person who was wearing it. They said they had been present at the violent police attack on Sunday. āIt was a brunch-themed protest and there were tables laid out with food,ā they said. āWe were literally chanting about brunch when the police got into formation and started beating us.ā
I donāt know where this detour is going. Maybe Iāll try to say something about the value of PR optics, fashionable political statements, and snappy slogans. When Obama dismissed ādefund the policeā as a counterproductive āsnappy sloganā that risks alienating the masses, Ilhan Omar and AOC clapped back by saying that itās not just a slogan, itās a policy demandāand that it wasnāt until they said ādefundā that people started paying attention.
I think this point is keyāin todayās hyper-fragmented attention economy, snappy slogans are crucial to how we communicate and declare our tribal allegiances, and all the political merch that people were slinging at the protests is more evidence of this. The success of āDefund the Policeā in hacking the attention economy this summer is because this slogan became a viral meme. Similarly, itās hard to imagine that the #BlockGarcetti protests would have had the same impact on Bidenās Cabinet decision if the videos of police beating protestors hadnāt gone viral and shown the President-elect that picking Garcetti would be bad PR.
Basically, for political ideas to break through, they should sound like streetwear slogans that you could print on a hoodie. Or as a bumper sticker on a car.
OK, hereās where Iāll wrap things up: as the morning came to an end, we marched through the mayorās bougie neighborhood as cars whizzing by honked their approval, finally ending up at a park where the leaders instructed everyone to stand in a circle. Everyone bowed their head solemnly, as if we were about to say a prayer. A smaller circle of core activistsāall clad in BLM hoodiesā stood in the middle, and led everyone in a group chant, first starting out with a whisper, then repeating the words into a thundering crescendo.
The chant we recited together is by Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur, and it is one that Iāve heard many times at protests across the country. As the political wheels turn from the Trump to Biden era, it is a reminder of why protestors are still hitting the streets every single damn day. It is both a rallying cry and a spiritual salvo.
It is our duty to fight for freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love and protect one another.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
NEW WORK ALERT šØ
High Snobiety recently asked my homies at New Models in Berlin to imagine what the future cultural landscape will look like, and they tapped their network of friends collaborators to contribute speculative takes. Big brains I adore like Mat Dryhurst, Sybil Prentice, Jak Ritger, and Joshua Citarella contributed, along with many others. Carly asked me to give my forecast for post-pandemic nightlife, so I shot her a quick voice note and she turned it into a blurb they titled CLUB FUTURE.
You can check out the issue, or download the whole thing as a PDF here.
isn't Sybil Prentice a weird drug addict who scams her way through basically everything?