cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7463076

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22839

On May 25, 2020, the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd, just five miles from my home in northeast Minneapolis. This injustice sparked the monumental resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the largest social movement in U.S. history, with its epicenter in the Twin Cities.

For me, that summer was marked day after day by enormous, militant protests, as well as by the extreme militarization of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. In an effort to discipline the movement, Minnesota governor Tim Walz swiftly deployed the National Guard, who for weeks showered protesters with pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. They drove military tanks down our streets, getting out only to shoot rubber bullets at us. Oftentimes, they would shoot at people sitting on their own front porches, ordering them inside under the citywide curfew.

Walz explained to the terrorized Twin Cities that he was only looking to protect our safety. He told us that the National Guard was not to be feared, that these people were part of our community. This was true — National Guard members in Minnesota are Minnesotans. They are our neighbors, our classmates, our coworkers, and our family members. They have full-time lives as citizens of Minnesota, normally attending National Guard training only once a month and rarely being deployed for duty. Unlike full-time military service members, National Guard soldiers’ lives are largely outside the military.

This, however, did not make them less of a threat. Instead, the experience of living in the Twin Cities in 2020 was one in which National Guard soldiers would hold the door open for you at the grocery store, wave to you on your morning walk, or offer to help you fix a flat tire on the side of the road. Then they would suit up in their bulletproof uniforms, prepare their tear gas canisters, get in their tanks, and spare no neighbor in their reign of terror.

In fact, the soldiers would posture as our allies even leading up to times of acute struggle. Many times, National Guard soldiers would line the streets near upcoming protests in tanks and riot gear, then wait for protesters to walk toward the gathering site. The soldiers would offer us cold bottles of water, granola bars, and fruit, telling us to “keep cool” in the hot weather and to “have a great day.”

When the protests began, though, they swapped their granola bars for tear gas canisters, and we would wash our burning eyes out with the same water they had given us just hours earlier. “Don’t be afraid,” Walz would repeat. “They are our neighbors.”

Disciplining Workers Is Part of the National Guard’s Job

This tension between neighbor and antagonist is represented in the National Guard not because everyone who enlists is secretly malicious or hates their community. The lived contradiction of the National Guard, purporting to serve the community while terrorizing its citizens, does not result from the soldiers’ moral failings. Rather, disciplining workers is an unchanging and intrinsic part of the job. Each soldier swears an oath to protect against enemies, “foreign and domestic,” and to deploy at the order of their state’s governor. The National Guard boasts a legacy of helping communities recover from pandemics, natural disasters, and “civil disturbances,” meaning, of course, class struggle.

The problem, then, is that we, the working-class people of the Twin Cities, the neighbors, coworkers, and family members of these soldiers, are not truly served by the National Guard because they did not ultimately swear an oath to us. Their contract is with the government and the corporate interests it protects. The “peace” they have been ordered to preserve is not the peace of the working class but the peace of the capitalists. Their oath is to protect the status quo, not to intervene in favor of the working class.

For this reason, it makes no difference whether these National Guards are our neighbors, coworkers, fellow students, or family — their social connection to the community does not dissolve the oath they swore against its organized resistance to injustice.

Keeping a Violent “Peace” in Minnesota

This is an invaluable reminder in the context of the developing struggle in the Twin Cities against ICE. This weekend, as the struggle intensified across the cities — most notably with the January 23 economic blackout across Minneapolis and Saint Paul — the question of whether the National Guard would be deployed, and in what capacity, became more prominent. In the streets over the weekend, protesters asked each other if they thought the National Guard would come to the aid of the movement — if perhaps Walz would deploy them to stop ICE from attacking.

Indeed, on Sunday, National Guard soldiers were sent to the Whipple Federal Building — where ICE operates each day and which has become an intense site of struggle between protesters and federal agents. They wore no riot gear, uncovered their faces, and offered hot coffee and doughnuts to protesters lining the streets outside the building. They told the people that they were there to help keep the peace.

But whose peace? We have no peace when our neighbors are kidnapped, tortured, and killed by federal agents for the simple act of being outside.

On Saturday, seven federal immigration agents beat, shot, and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti because he was filming them on his phone. Two weeks ago, they shot Renee Good just a few blocks away as she tried to leave in her car. They have kidnapped children, broken up families, tortured and imprisoned our friends and neighbors, and they have gassed us and shot us for fighting back.

Is this the “peace” the National Guard seeks to protect, with its coffee and doughnuts? Will the National Guard protect this “peace” when Tim Walz orders them to respond to “civil disturbances” and crush our struggle? The answer, as we have seen before, is yes — they will protect the so-called peace that is the violent status quo because that is what they are sworn to do.

Working-Class Organization, Without Illusions in the National Guard

As the struggle in the Twin Cities develops and the community continues to organize itself against ICE, the question of the National Guard must be clarified: they cannot, and will not, act as our allies. They may, as individuals, occupy places in our communities, but their sworn allegiance to the capitalist government they serve inherently makes them an enemy of the working class. They cannot serve the government and purport to serve us too — the government and the working class are diametrically opposed. Our interests are irreconcilable.

The only way a National Guard soldier can ally with us in our struggle is by defecting and joining our ranks. We can foster no illusions that the Guard as an entity will act on our behalf. The truth is that our greatest power lies in our organized struggle, in our workplaces, our schools, and our communities. We have the capacity to kick ICE out of our cities and protect our immigrant neighbors, and the growing movement in the Twin Cities is developing rapidly and beginning to realize its power. We cannot lose faith in our own ability by trusting the National Guard.

The post 2020 Taught Us the National Guard Is Not Our Ally, Whether in the Twin Cities or Elsewhere appeared first on Left Voice.

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