Last year was a high watermark for Seattle’s anti-police brutality movement. Catching the wave of resistance that started in Ferguson over the murder of Michael Brown, and continuing in New York, over the killing by asphyxiation of Eric Garner and what came to be known as Black Lives Matter, Seattle activists took over the Westlake Center Shopping Mall in protest of police violence everywhere. Disrupting business as usual, the mall was closed three hours early, enraging of lot of Americans camped out with a hard-on for bargains.

Steam had already been building in 2014, as Seattle activists attempted to take over Interstate-5 in protest of the Grand Jury’s failure to indict Officer Darren Wilson, Brown’s murderer. It was as exciting locally as it was nationally. Clear lines have been drawn ever since, making racism in white people more obvious in America and proving terms like “post-racial society” a gross farce.

Instead of taking responsibility, the police played the victim and continued their murderous onslaught. Only this time, technology had caught up to them. They were being recorded and soon after the murders of Garner and Brown, phone footage of the murder of Freddy Grey came to light and twelve-year-old Tamir Rice who was killed for playing with a toy gun, and it goes on. In solidarity to their fellow good ol’ boys, they went as far as to snidely wear buttons on duty that said “I can breathe” mocking the last words of Garner, “I can’t breathe,” which has been used as a chant and a motto for the Black Lives Matter movement. The cops came out as bold oppressors. Many civilians also came out in support wearing their own “I can breathe” t-shirts and raising funds for murderous cops. Apparently, a large portion of Americans feel holding cops accountable for murder is oppressing them, and something as simple as saying Black Lives Matter is controversial.

The dialogue continues, bringing us to October 22^nd, a national day of protest against police brutality. A rally is happening again downtown at Westlake Center Park. I am there: a Native American woman is in tears as she tells her son’s story into a microphone. On the sign she holds is a picture of her son’s face. A face that she says, sobbing, was unrecognizable to her after he was beaten to death by the police while waiting for the bus. At some point she turns and shouts this injustice to the police who surround the rally. Her mic fails, cutting her voice out.

“The police are racist,” a deep voice in the crowd yells backing her up. I try to conceal wiping away tears.

It’s a small turnout, at the most it seems like sixty people. The stage is surrounded by banners and signs with pictures of victims of police brutality, the Stolen Lives Project, an organization whose mission is to make a list of all of the lives taken by police, is there. A line of people by the side of the stage take turns reading the stories of these victims and has the crowd repeat their name. “Say his name,” they shout and each name is repeated out loud. The most obvious thing so far is that most of the crowd is made up of people of color. In a city that’s eighty-percent white, it’s offensive not to see more out in support. Or, to quote a phrase that’s been going around “white silence = white consent”. If the term Black Lives Matter alienates you, try thinking of it not as a race thing but as a privilege thing. If you’ve had the privilege to never fear your children being shot by the police, if you’ve never worried about getting shot in the back by some psycho with a badge, well, good for you. Now get out and represent.

A small number of Anarchists hang around the back of the rally masked up and dressed in all black. There’s maybe four at the most. I’m surprised. They’ve been wheatpasting fliers to poles in the Central District encouraging folks to show up. Not being one to regularly check my dayplanner, it’s them that reminded me this was even going on today.

***

As I look around, I notice a lot of the signs being held have a similar font to others exclaiming “REVOLUTION!” in caps. Everything is suspect to me since the The Revolutionary Communist Party managed to snake their way into the movement. The RCP is a vanguardist organization infamous for appropriating relevant people’s struggles as their own as a means to recruit. They’ve also been known to shut them down if they refuse their leadership. Doing their best to make it seem like they are the big organizers (and through manipulation and deceit, they often enough are, but rarely from the start), the RCP gets everybody all mixed up and before anyone knows it, everyone is a dupe recruiting for their version of revolution. A revolution which seems to be just that, taking power away from local organizers and pushing their moneyed agendas of freedom. It seems they’ve gotten a few good teeth into the anti-police brutality movement in Seattle. It’s depressing really. What better place than a movement based around simply wanting justice against fascist murdering police to push some crappy sectarian politics? A place where the reason that people have come together at all is to end the violence? After all everyone here is passionate and desperate for justice. They know if they threw a really pushing an aged and failed Marxism nobody would show.

***

A tall white guy in his twenties reads the story of another victim of the police, then says something to the like of, “It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, young or old, the police have too much power and they’re out to get anyone. We have to rise up against this.”

I listen to him, pondering the complexities of a fascist organization such as the police, who oppress everyone, but particularly people of color and minorities and what it means to get behind a group called Black Lives Matter. The argument is often made it’s exclusive by it’s very name. However, it’s the “lives” of the phrase that’s significant. While many people have been targets of police abuse, the court system in America consistently sees fit not to charge cops for murdering people of color – cops who take their lives.

An older woman with a clipboard breaks my spell. Her t-shirt says something about the Revolution.

“Do you want to join our mailing list?” she asks.

I wonder who “our” is. After all, I’m here and I don’t have a mailing list.

“Is it RCP?” I ask.

“It’s a large group of many organizations and people,” she says. I will later be handed a flyer for the same thing, a group called Rise Up October that’s organizing rallies in New York on October 24^th to follow this one. They have done work to fly families of police murder victims from all over to attend this national convergence. Families from Washington, some of who are here today will also go out to represent.

“That’s OK,” I say.

“For instance, even Quentin Tarentino,” she says. Then after an uncomfortable pause, she realizes she’s getting nowhere and moves on.

Quentin Tarantino?

***

The M.C tells everyone the march is about to start and encourages everyone to pick up a sign representing one of the stolen lives. Many do, and someone asks me personally if I will, but I decline. Like chanting, I feel awkward holding a sign, feel it draws attention to me even though it’s the opposite.

Perhaps it’s just social anxiety, but maybe it’s part of a bigger problem. Maybe it comes from the apathy so commonplace in our society, the way the people have become so disenfranchised from social change stirs in me a weird sense of shame, a feeling of an awkwardness even being here, an unacknowledged despair.

Or perhaps it’s the self-serving, like the RCP and it’s success in appropriating a movement. I won’t carry a sign bearing the image of a police victim because I don’t know what that means to other people in the march. I don’t want anyone to assume things about me and whom I’m affiliated with. I don’t want to alienate myself from the larger group simply because I don’t know who printed the damn sign or where the website promoted on it will take you. If only there weren’t so many self-serving assholes in radical politics, then maybe I could sign up for mailing lists and carry signs without feeling like a sucker. If your party is alienating anyone, making anyone question uniting with the person standing beside them, you’re fucking up. We’re out here supporting people’s right to be alive. And you need to get the fuck out of here.

***

As the march starts, I’m not alone in my suspicions. I’ve never seen a rally with clearer distinctions. Everyone with questionable signs stands up front, as do the Stolen Lives signs. And in the back a big group of Black Bloc, maybe forty or so Anarchists have joined up before we have even gone so far as two blocks. A couple of them push a red wagon with some beat up faux wood speaker cabinets, a stereo amp and an iPod, all of it tied down with bungee cords. The speakers blast political hip-hop about sticking it to the man. It’s an awkward and unwieldy freight and I respect their diligence and dedication to it.

A familiar chant of, “A.C.A.B! ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS!” rises up from the back, challenging any ideas of reform. I’m with them on that, seeing the police force as a psychopathic organization that should be abolished. The idea of a good cop to me makes about as much sense as a good Klan member or a good member of Al Queda. You are already corrupted if you can justify being a part of the force. If a bad cop rapes a sex worker, it’s a good cop who won’t participate but covers for him.

The crowd seems to grow in numbers as the march weaves it’s way through downtown. It’s still disappointingly small compared to what’s been going on with the Black Lives Matter movement nationally and to Seattle last year.

A guy with a black mask hands me a flyer condemning the RCP for their tactics, taking power away from local Black organizers and their longstanding tradition of marginalizing LGBTQ from their revolution.

“Are those guys up there RCP?” I ask. At this point, I’m not even sure whom I’m referring to. There’s a whole lot of people up there at the front of the march, a lot of them are holding Stolen Lives signs, a lot of their signs say #RiseUpOctober and I’m sure a bunch of them just want justice no matter who made their damn sign.

“Yeah,” he says, but with or without the clouding of our prejudice, it’s still murky and difficult to know exactly who the hell we’re talking about.

“Is Rise Up some kind of front for them?” I ask, still unclear.

“No, they’ve actually done some good work,” he says, reluctantly, as anarchists will about any group that’s too well organized, “they are helping the families of police victims fly out to New York for the national protest. Well, actually, fuck that. The families managed to do that for themselves. But the RCP has certainly managed to get pretty entrenched in it because they have the money and power to do it.”

“They certainly have managed to appropriate it here,” I say. “They’re all over with their megaphones and their literature. I don’t know who’s here to push the commie agenda from who’s here to stop police from killing people.”

He tells me that’s because a lot of the real radical organizers around police brutality “went underground” after the FBI Grand Jury trials of 2102 when four anarchists were imprisoned with no charges for refusing to give testimony for property destruction that happened on May Day of that year. They’ve since been released.

***

I think back to last year at about this time when there were rallies in support of Ferguson. I arrived late and joined a growing group of stragglers looking for the march. We found part of it:

A group of about forty people standing in the middle of Olive and Boren, broken off from the larger protest by cops in riot gear. The police had already done a hell of a job breaking up the protest, looking for payback for Black Friday. They had us surrounded on each end of the street not allowing us to go anywhere as a group. Finally, they pushed us up Olive into Capitol Hill leading us to Pike and Boren. At Boren, apparently being the line separating Capitol Hill, they stopped us and held up traffic going the other way, not letting anyone go anywhere. Finally, they said we would be allowed to go back downtown if we stayed on the sidewalk, but if we went into the street we’d be arrested. We walked downtown Pike in defeat, a small group.

But when we got downtown to Westlake Center the rest of the protest had reformed, taking over Pine Street. A bus headed north was unable to move until we did and stood jackknifed in a turn, beside it in the right lane was a cab driver who was with us, refusing to move until we were all ready to go. A megaphone was held for anyone to speak into and many did. Finally, the cabbie himself spoke with a thick accent about how police brutality was wrong and how it needed to be stopped. A hat was passed around for the time that he lost blocking the roads for us. And he drove away with a few protesters, taking them home. It was deeply moving. And I want that momentum to come back.

***

“Fifty police were shot and killed last year!” A man shouts to the protest as it reaches its end,  “where’s the protest for them?”

Everyone jumps back with their statistics. The guy closest to me says, “And 650 people were killed by cops.”

I want to say I told him, “there’s no time like the present,” but I don’t think of it until the jerk is gone. The irony is interesting to me. If this were a protest that was simply against the police, I would still be here. But this is a protest against police brutality and police murder. This is a march to stand against unarmed young men being shot in the back. What the fuck could you see wrong in that?

As the rally ended a young black man handed me a flyer that says, “#BLACKLIVESMATTER NOT BLACK FRIDAY,” and calls for everyone to converge on Westlake Park at one PM that day.

“Tell your friends on Facebook,” he says.

“I don’t have Facebook.”

“Well, then tell your friends.”

So, I’m telling you.