alondra cano – Confluence:

Album de photographies anti-communard. Louise Michel, chef des incendiaires, 1871. Photographie d'Ernest Charles Eugène Appert (1830-1891). Paris, musée Carnavalet. — Album de photographies anti-communard. Louise Michel, chef des incendiaires, 1871. Photographie d’Ernest Charles Eugène Appert (1830-1891). Paris, musée Carnavalet.

This morning, after dropping the kids at school and Laura at work, I swung back to the neighborhood. Got two coffees at May Day Cafe, and drove over to pick up Alondra so that we could listen in on the session proposing HF322 to move to the Public Safety Committee of the State Legislature. The bill passed 9 – 6 in favor.

The bill proposes to be able to file civil suits and, in turn, collect damages from individuals to “recover costs” for those who have been arrested during public protests. HF322, brought to the floor by Rep. Nick Zerwas MN30A (who I am sure has been greatly effected by the throngs of protesters in Elk River over the last few harrowing years) is tactically vague and draconian. It fits perfectly into the mind-set of these times. There’s plenty to be concerned about right now, this bill being one of them. The measure, in essence, is a tactic to 1.) intimidate and corral potential protest, 2.) give more leeway and narrative framing ability to the police in regard to tactics of crowd control and its aftermath, and 3.) create a system to tie up the courts with “do-gooder” lawyers, tiring them out with cases to handle – of merit, though much of the dog & pony show variety – while other cases and incidents get less attention. Like Trump and Co. have already shown in just five days in office, disruption and confusion is their go-to tactic; a slight of hand to dismantle the demos and its strengths.

I hate going into government buildings. They give me the fucking creeps. And, generally speaking, I try to shy away from working with the electorate. Electoral politics isn’t where my heart lies, and I often find them playing catch up to my own desires for the world I wish to live in. But this fight we are in will take all of us. The words of, among others at the session, Reps. Omar and Dehn were a relief. Their questions and commentary illustrated their deep commitment to the long fight ahead.

Many individuals associated with BLM were also present. Jason Sole, and especially the always passionate and inspiring John Thompson, were there to make the point that HF322 was proposed, in large part, as a response to BLM protests and shutdowns (MOA, 4th Precinct, I-94, etc…) over the last few years. The point, rightly, was made that this is, in effect, a law to systematically silence black dissent. We’ve seen this before and there is no reason to think that it wouldn’t, in a viciously organized and populist fashion, rise to the surface again.

But herein lies the problem, and in certain regard, the dog whistle to those who feel that now, after all this time, they must act and get in the streets with BLM and others fighting for justice. Zerwas and Co. propose this bill, yes, in response to the generous and necessary work of BLM and their allies, but also as a means of stopping dissent off at the pass and corralling future action, or at least momentarily confusing it, from all parties. It is a bill that shouts to non-POC, to the middle class of all colors who have been concerned, but out of the fight, to stay on their couches and keep scrolling through Facebook. A warning that the street, the highway, isn’t simply not safe for body, but unsafe for your bottom line and bank account. BLM inspire you? Trump got you all riled up? Pissed at the future environmental disaster that is DAPL? Tweet about it, but don’t make a move. Stay shackled to your digital soapbox.

But if we are to move past this moment, and force the reigns of power away from the fascists, the Republicans, the middling liberal Democrats, the skinheads who are energized and emboldened by this moment, the corporate CEOs and those who profit off their devastation of land, people, and future then getting into the streets (along with so much more) is exactly what we will have to do. And the streets will need to be filled across issue: BLM against DAPL. Middle class Edina mothers and fathers marching and blocking highways for the lives of indigenous women, and so much more.

This confounding group who, without forethought, can seem at cross-purposes or antagonistic to one another is exactly the coalition that will bring about another world. Otherwise we have no power. If HF322, and the many subsequent bills to be proposed in the future, stay an anti-BLM measure alone, they will do so precisely because their intimidation tactics for a larger body of cross-issue dissent was locked up by fear before it could gain momentum and strength. That is exactly what they want and exactly why this bill is moving forward.

About ten years ago I took an amazing and inspirational road trip around the country visiting past sites of social upheaval and dissent. I stood on the roadside along a highway in rural Alabama where a group of racists had firebombed a bus taking Freedom Riders from one destination to the next. A hotel in Montana where an IWW organizer fighting for the rights of striking miners had been abducted from his hotel room, dragged through the streets, and had his corpse deposited in front of the union hall with the dimensions of a grave carved into his back. The people whose lives, across an American history of dissent that I encountered, were not extraordinary. That is to say they were not born with special gifts that allowed them abilities that you and / or I do not possess. They simply had had enough and were compelled to act. They sought out the tools and relationships that manifest change in the world because they were compelled to live in a world that was just, fair, and vibrant.

On this same trip I visited, with my dear friend Dan S Wang, the University of Michigan’s Labadie Collection. Just that day the archive had received a very special new addition to the collection; a photo album featuring individuals, and more striking to me, group family portraits of individuals, who took part in the Paris Commune of 1871. Anarchist, revolutionaries all, these mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, lovers, looked so unthreatening. So, startlingly, middle class and comfortable. Radical is not the adjective I would have used to describe them. And yet there they were. Coming from many different walks of life, many different stories to share, they stood at barricades, conjoined their homes to create new streets by blasting through the walls of their apartments. They fought and died together, because they, in collaboration, believed that between their diverse set of experiences another world was possible. I looked at these photos – at their normalcy, their pedestrian quality – and thought, “how isn’t this me?”

As I walked away from the Capitol this morning and headed back to the car with Alondra I could not help but remind myself of when I held that photo album in my hands.

“How isn’t this me?” That is the question, with all the complications it entails, that we need to be asking ourselves, and ourselves in proximity or in distance to one another, as scare tactic, fascistic, “no wait NOW is the time we get into the street TOGETHER!” bills like HF322 are brought to committee by cowards and sycophants like Nick Zerwas.

– Sam

Not long ago an anonymous source provided me a transcript of an interrogation which Police Federation President Bob Kroll conducted with a 14 year old boy – notably, African-American – when Lt.Kroll was then a Sergeant.

While public information, like so many city documents, this transcript has been buried under the weight of bureaucracy for some twenty years now. In it, Lt. Kroll is revealed to be exactly the type of person many of us are well aware he is; bullying, insensitive, callous, cruel, vindictive… Within it, along with so much more, Lt. Kroll goes so far as to tell the young boy in front of him that he will one day “be a statistic” and killed by a police officer.

A few weeks back, in collaboration with Uncivilized Books, and with the assistance of eighteen comics illustrators, we gathered together at Beyond Repair for an afternoon of drawing wherein we used this transcript – word for word without a single alteration – as the script to illustrate the narrative played out between this young man and Lt. Kroll. In due time we printed 300 copies of this comic with the intent to strategically distribute it around Hennepin County.

On Thursday morning I dropped off copies for each City Council Member, as well as the Mayor. Soon copies will move further afield to Governor Mark Dayton & Lt. Governor Tina Smith, state senators and rep’s, up and down the line.

In the short amount of time that the entire City Council has had editions of the comic I have been impressed and gratified by the response I have received. The energetic and proactive responses of Council Members Jacob Frey, Elizabeth Glidden, Cameron Gordon, Lisa Bender, and Alondra Canohave shown that a good amount of our elected officials in Minneapolis understand how the actions, conduct, and character of Lt. Kroll derails any substantive civic discourse around police accountability and public safety, and how that any long-reaching, thoughtful dialogue around these issues cannot take place when the loudest voice in the room displays the dismissive, aggressive, counter-productive tendencies so evident in the actions and mannerisms of Bob Kroll.

Yesterday I met with a local journalist whose focus is the police beat in the Twin Cities. Pleasantly enthusiastic, he nonetheless wondered, “why this story and why now?” What is the purpose of devoting page space to a twenty year old incident? My reaction was, because it isn’t an old story at all. What the comic illustrates is how we continuously live within and build off of past actions within the present tense.

The narrative told within the comic is common. All too common. It’s played out each and every day in our police precincts and courtrooms, and there are mile high stacks of similar transcripts which speak towards the same callous, and arguably proactive indifference which was directed towards this young person.

The story within the comic we produced plays out not long after the Clinton crime bill takes effect in 1996. What we’ve seen in those twenty years is three strikes and mandatory minimum laws enacted, in parallel to the excessive funding of prisons (both public and private) and budgetary increases for prosecutors the country-wide. Hand in hand with these “tough on crime” funding booms we’ve experienced the defunding of public defenders, treatment and advocacy programs, education, and an astonishing array of social services.

Kroll’s “I don’t care if you did it or not” attitude within the transcript plays directly into this entire ecosystem to the degree in which that indifference becomes procedural. Kroll plays a role. At a time when Hennepin and Ramsey Counties are set to jointly allocate $18 million dollars to fund 165 new juvenile jail cells, Kroll fills the role of processor within that system. A cog, he greases the wheels within the machine so that those beds get filled, primarily with young black and brown bodies, a means to ensure and justify those callous expenditures and the continuing rhetoric that so aggressively, and profitably, devalues human life within it.

We all know that Kroll is a clown. A blustering, blowhard of a figure put into place to distract, disorient, and misinform so that nothing, absolutely nothing of substance gets done. We watch him yelling, stumbling around the civic social landscape, pantomiming white supremacy and patriarchy to the bleak amusement of many. So, yeah, a comic as a method to discuss his role within the prison / judicial industrial complex makes sense, right? It allows us to see Kroll, and more importantly, the role he plays, for what it is.

But as we all know, clown’s aren’t really funny. For some people clown’s are even deeply scary. And when real people, not those playing a role, or those masquerading as human(e), find their lives on the line this sideshow that Kroll serves as a leading character within turns from farce to drama on a knife’s edge. Lives are ruined; silenced, shut off to the questions and qualities of life that concern us all.

It’s not simply the tenor of dialogue that Kroll disrupts, it’s his ability to shut down and silence other voices within the social space wherein the dialogue plays out that matters. The cacophony surrounding his clownishness disrupts the growth or productive complication of our shared narrative called democratic voice. It stifles the narratives ability to flourish and reflect the many different experiences lived in Minneapolis. At its most benign, his antics make the narrative super repetitive and outright boring.

It’s time for Act Two and yet the script for this second act within our civic conversation has yet to be written. In imagining the narrative about to unfold before us, and the characters who might take center stage, it’s time for the clown to exit, stage right.

Stop into Beyond Repair to get your own copy of Sgt. Kroll Goes to the Office. It’s free, of course. After reading it, please share your thoughts. Unless we talk about the new roles, the new characters and imagined vistas available to us, the script will not change and the play will remain the same, going on as it has for the last twenty years. To the delight of few, the boredom of many, and the silencing of far too many.

We write this script together.