The Counterpublic Papers, vol. 1 no. 24

Well this was a news week. 

A Baltimore court found one of the police officers involved in the Freddie Gray murder (the driver) innocent of all charges. The Supreme Court voted 4-3 to let Affirmative Action in college admissions stand, and voted 4-4 to force Obama to go back to the drawing board on immigration. Voters in Great Britain decided to leave the E.U. by a thin margin. The Baltimore Planning Commission voted to approve Kevin Plank’s Port Covington development project. And yesterday at about 7pm, a half hour before D. Watkins began reading from his new memoir The Cook up, a young Baltimore MC was shot in his car. Finally, a few minutes before I sat down to write I stumble across this news story—the Michigan Supreme Court decided that police officers cannot be criminally prosecuted for lying.

The first and the last stories are obviously related. In both cases state law constrain the ability of regular citizens to hold police accountable for crime. In the Michigan case, it’s the Disclosures by Law Enforcement Act. In the Freddie Gray case, it’s the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights. 

But I’d argue that they’re all of a piece. 

I’ll tell you what I mean….however first if you’ve about 23 minutes to spare (which is about 22.5 minutes more than you normally spend on this, I know I know, but it’s worth it) check out this. 

It’s a Greek interview with Mark Blyth. Blyth, who used to be my next door (office) neighbor, is one of the smartest people I know (and from what I hear one of the best cooks in political science). And he’s also got this uncanny ability to take really complicated ideas and boil them down into ways that the average bloke can understand. 

Even with the accent.

So the video does take a little bit of work to get into. I had to watch parts of it more than once and there are a few names that I don’t recognize. But what he basically does is examine how Europe got to a point where this large thing that’s supposed to do good by everyone (the European Union) ends up only benefitting this thin slice of its population, partially in the name of “austerity”. And how this dynamic ends up creating the context where a majority of British voters decide to leave the union. 

Now people are and probably should blame their decision on racism, on immigrant xenophobia, the type we associate here in the United States with the Tea Party and now Donald Trump. 

Ok.

But why now? 

The Tea Party began as a response to the bank bailouts of late oughts. They felt that neither the banks nor the people they’d elected to put their concerns into law were responsive. More to the point they felt they were both illegitimate. All the claims their political representatives were making about what they’d put into effect if they’d actually gotten elected, if they’d actually taken over the House, if they’d actually taken over the Senate, were BS. 

And they weren’t wrong. What they were wrong about was what they in fact wanted. And they were wrong about who was to blame. 

But going back to NAFTA and before, they’d been sold a bill of goods about what a global economy would give to them. What having more markets to export goods to would give to them. They were sold this bill of goods by both parties. 

Throughout Europe citizens have been sold a somewhat similar bill of goods about the wonders of relatively open borders and a single currency. Their living standards were supposed to increase. Their ability to provide for their children was supposed to increase. And neither’s occurring. In fact, what we see, in working class populations within relatively well-off nations, and then in nations like Greece and Italy in general, is the reverse move. Instead of spending government money on the people, which is what governments used to do during recessions, they spent it propping up the banks. And then on top of that, they promoted policies designed to keep government from spending money on anything other than the banks. 

(Blyth refers to the “Swabian housewife” at about the two minute mark. One of the ways Europe and the US pushed through austerity policies designed to contract rather than expand government, was through the common sense analogy of the household budget. Families have to manage their budget, we were told. And governments should have to manage their budget as well, we were told. As if “families” and “governments” were the same thing. They aren’t. But because it sounds so much like common sense policy analysts are able to get away with using it to make public policy—to the detriment of many of those Swabian housewife led families.)

As their own abilities to provide for their families shrink and they see what taxes they pay going to banks—who don’t even loan the money back to them—they find themselves cramped in an economic space that’s becoming tighter and tighter. 

Under these circumstances what xenophobic tendencies they have come to the surface. If there isn’t enough money around to take care of the people, there definitely isn’t money around to take care of “the others”. 

This connects the Brexit decision to Trump.

How do we connect all of this to what’s going on in Baltimore?

I’m going to go back to one of the few factoids I mention every time I talk about the book. 

Police spending in Baltimore has increased from $145 million in 1990 to over $450 million in 2015. More Baltimore city workers are employed by the police department than any other municipal agency. It spends eight times more on SWAT than it does on community relations. 

Police spending has taken the place of welfare spending. In order to render the city safe for downtown development and tourism, safe for gentrification (which is more about increasing land values than it is about reducing the black and white working class footprint), and in the face of structural constraints that make non-elected financial stakeholders (corporations, bond-rating agencies) more important than flesh and blood working class citizens, public officials have decided to use police to take care of its black working class residual on the one hand….and then tax subsidies to take care of its wealthy corporate developers on the other. Port Covington is sold to Baltimore citizens as a project which will directly benefit all Baltimore residents, when in fact the one thing Baltimore citizens get directly is the risk. The economic instability generated in Baltimore’s working class neighborhoods as a result ends up spilling out in blood, sometimes (if not often) generated by almost-impossible-to-prosecute police officers. Those few lucky enough to get into a school like Poly or City (or like City and Poly, depending on your ties) can look forward to something like Affirmative Action. 

Now this story looks a bit different for white folk than black folk—but not that different. Whites in Dundalk and Essex have no better options employment wise. And are likely having their blood spilled at similar rates. However unlike their black counterparts, someone like Trump speaks to them. 

Trump by the way, won’t win. It’s about as likely that Trump wins as it is likely one of the remaining police officers in the Freddie Gray case is found guilty.

But what we’re looking at with all of this—with Trump, with Brexit, with the Freddie Gray prosecutions, with anti-immigrant sentiment, with rising anti-developer sentiment, is the beginning of the beginning. Trump won’t get elected, but the tendency he represents will likely grow…particularly in rural areas. The police officers in the Freddie Gray case will likely go free, but pressure on officials to transform police departments will increase. Bernie Sanders won’t be our next president, but the tendency he represents will likely grow…particularly in metropolitan areas.  

Strap your seat belts on. Even if we end up in cars navigated by Google we’re going to need them.

…

An hour before the one of the best game sevens I’d ever seen, The Jacobin published my piece on the NBA and economic development. 

Last Tuesday I guest-hosted the Marc Steiner show, talking about the piece, Trump, and Islamophobia.

This weekend I’ll be at the Socialism Conference in Chicago and on a Sunday panel with Donna Murch, Barbara Ransby, and Keeangha Yamahtta-Taylor talking about black politics after Obama. 

(I really wish I could punch the person who made my July schedule…and not bloody my own nose in the process.)