Written and Experienced by Max Edison
Last night in the streets of downtown Phoenix, a hundred of the valley’s troublemakers and anarchists secured a victory for their communities against the occupying Phoenix Police Department. Roosevelt Row was taken back for the people between 4th and 2nd, with no traffic control or intervention by PPD. All of that was handled by the protesters with whatever barricades or cones could be found around the area.
The people on the street Saturday proved that you need nobody’s permission to act. You don’t need a permit, or an organization, to represent yourself and your beliefs on the street. In an era where social networking and communication have been so decentralized to the point of the individuals voice being amplified to hundreds or thousands of onlookers online the cadre and logistical apparatuses loaned to us by organizations are obsolete.
This was a victory for the modern world over the old way of doing things, an expression of the power wielded by neighbors, friends, and comrades NOT parties, NGOs, or clubs.
Under the black flag of anarchy, a neighborhood was liberated for but a moment from the police. The people on the streets but also the people in the bars and sidewalks around us were in the hands of their fellow men and not clenched within the institutional fist of their normal existence.
This was but a taste of the way we could all live, all of the time, if we choose to embrace what we know to be real over what we’ve been told to believe in.
We know the bonds intimately that weave our lives into the communities because we feel them. We have to be instructed on the place that police, the state, the managers and the politicians have carved for themselves within our lives, out of our time, our sweat, and our blood.
If Saturday night showed someone that they can reclaim that all, and return what is theirs to themself, it is a step forward in the revolution.