Barricades and Garbage Cans: America’s Police State

In New York City, one of the comparisons being made is between the response to COVID-19 and the response to the BLM protests. In the case of COVID-19, the city (and the state) proved themselves largely inept, and despite months of advance warning, they acted much too late. However, when it came to the BLM protests, the entire city was shut down in anticipation of protests that were still largely prospective, imposing an 8 pm curfew and transforming the city into a police state. In other words, when it came to a public health threat that's been known for months, the city was only capable of acting ineffectively and after the fact, but when it came to stifling potential, future rallies for racial justice, the city was capable of acting swiftly and in anticipation of a forthcoming “threat.”

This comparison speaks to the way that the American state—at both the city, state, and national level—has increasingly abdicated any role in providing for the public good while instead seeing its role as primarily that of providing “law and order.” Consequently, when it comes to a public health crisis, the American state proves itself incapable of handling the problem, because you can’t “solve” COVID-19 with a police force. Instead, you need a competent and well-funded public healthcare system, as well as politicians who listen to them, and we have neither of those. Moreover, this isn’t (primarily) a red state and blue state problem, as New York City and New York State have long been Democratic strongholds. But despite this fact, New York State’s strategic reserve of PPE were depleted and expired, our Governor and Mayor failed to act, and what passes for a “public healthcare” system in the United States had been withering under years of Democratic austerity budgets.

Juxtaposed with this, when confronted with the prospect of citywide and largely peaceful demonstrations, the NYPD mobilized like an occupying army. Curfew was imposed (and enforced), habeas corpus was suspended, a militarized police force descended on all corners of the city, the population was controlled like herds of cattle, and thousands of protestors were swept up into the criminal justice system. The United States might be a complete failure when it comes to public health, but when it comes to stifling dissent and controlling populations, there are few who do it better.

In fact, beyond this, the FBI was also deployed to NYC, with reports emerging that protestors were being questioned about their political beliefs and their possible affiliation with Antifa. For those who might not know, Antifa isn’t really an actual group, so much as a way of proclaiming your opposition to fascism—one way of describing it would be as an “ethos.” So, people who say that they’re Antifa are generally stating that they’re opposed to fascism and not that they’re members of a group or organization that has meetings and so forth. Therefore, the idea that there’s some organized group named Antifa who are somehow a danger to “law and order” is a complete myth—it’s ignorance at best and conspiracy theory at worst.

And yet, even though a Google search would quickly dispel the idea that Antifa exists, the full force of the national police state was rolled out in order to quell this wholly fictitious threat. So, not only could the NYPD deploy immediately in order to suppress the so-called “threat” of civil unrest, but the FBI was also deployed to suppress the completely fabricated threat of Antifa. The United States therefore seems better prepared to deal with Sauron or Darth Vader than they are to deal with COVID-19.

Over the past few months, people have been discussing the idea that America might be a failed state. And I’m sympathetic to this argument, especially as I’ve experienced life in a more functional one. But what the above comparison has helped make clear is that the American state is only a failed state when considered from the point of view of its ability to provide the public good. So, we have no public healthcare and an anemic public education system, but when it comes to transferring wealth from the working class to the rich, the American state is extremely effective (as Jodi Dean recently noted on Doug Henwood’s radio show). Similarly, the American state also works very well when it comes to stifling the dissent that inevitably results from its first function.

However, something that recently caught my attention was the way that this was playing out at a more granular, local level. In fact, it would be easy to say that given the scale of contemporary events, this example is almost trivial in its superficiality. But I think it’s precisely this superficiality that makes it revealing, because it helps demonstrates the way that the transformation of the American state is evident in the most insignificant of everyday details. Case in point, I was amazed at the speed with which the city could remove all public garbage cans while being completely incapable of keeping a street closed for pedestrians.

Several weeks ago, New York City announced that it was closing several miles of streets in order to provide pedestrians more room to walk during quarantine. One such street is a few blocks over, which made my wife and I quite happy, because it's difficult to walk in Brooklyn while maintaining social distance. It's not that it’s so terribly busy outside, but if you’re committed to social distancing, going for a walk requires a lot of avoiding main streets and darting into the roadway on smaller ones. So, having a little more space to walk was really welcome, even though it was only a few blocks worth of road closures.

However, after the NYPD set up barricades at the end of each block, these barricades were quickly moved by people looking to park their cars, and these people wouldn't bother putting the barricades back again. So, after one car went to park, the road was effectively open again. My wife and I did spend a few days putting the barricades back in place, but we quickly realized that we were fighting a losing battle.

After their initial placement, I'm pretty sure the NYPD never bothered checking on the barricades again. However, in a city like NYC, with over 8 million people crammed together, it’s not going to be long before all the barricades are moved. It therefore doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that the city would have the capacity to ensure that these roads remained closed. The problem is, when it came to providing this trivial public good, the city just didn’t care. More specifically, when it came to one of its non-policing, public good functions, the NYPD didn’t see it as a priority.

However, a few days ago, I noticed that every single garbage can in Brooklyn had disappeared, seemingly overnight. This isn’t hyperbole—you literally couldn’t find a public garbage can anywhere. And the reason they disappeared? The city was worried that they might be thrown through windows during protests. Therefore, not only was there a failure to close roads for pedestrians, but the sidewalks that did remain open were turned into trash heaps.

The earlier argument about the transformation of the American states isn’t just some abstract meta-narrative that you have to impose on the world. Instead, it’s a story that you can “read” in the very details around us. When it came to dealing with COVID-19, the government proved entirely incapable of a response. Moreover, when it came to trying to make their failure more bearable by providing a little more public space during what’s now a three month quarantine, they couldn’t even provide that. So, it’s obvious that we can’t rely on our government to handle a public health crisis, but we can’t even rely on them to provide something as simple as an evening stroll for people cooped up in New York sized apartments.

And yet, when it comes to creating inequality and managing dissent, the state operates as efficiently as ever—even in the midst of a pandemic. At the national level, individuals received a $1,200 stimulus check in the hope that we wouldn’t notice that we were also being saddled with a $36,000 bailout debt that went to this country’s richest individuals, while the National Guard and the FBI were called upon to diligently suppress “threats,” both real and imagined. Or, at the more local level, the city’s budget was slashed rather than imposing a mild tax on the super-rich, while the only part of the budget that remained intact was the NYPD’s astronomical one.

With this in mind, the transformation of the American state shouldn’t be imagined as a simplistic transformation entailing the complete elimination of non-police government agencies in favor of nothing but a police force. Instead, it’s a transformation in which the police increasingly abdicate any role in serving the public good (not that I believe that they should or can help provide for this), but also one in which non-police government agencies increasingly take on what Ruth Wilson Gilmore recently called a “police function.” In other words, it’s a world in which the rest of the government looks more and more like the police, while the police refuse to do anything beyond “law and order.” More simply, our state—both the police and non-police agencies that comprise it—come to serve as part of the “police state.” As a consequence, the government becomes incapable of providing a modicum of public space, but becomes fully capable of removing every single garbage can in the city overnight. As the old adage goes, to a hammer everything is a nail.

It’s hard to think of a government agency more essential to the public good than the Department of Sanitation, let alone an agency that’s about as far removed from “law and order” as you could imagine. And yet, over the past few days, it demonstrated that its role in providing a safe and sanitary public space was less important than its role in “law and order.” That is, rather than helping provide the public with a clean and sanitary city, when push came to shove, it proved to be just another subsidiary of the police state.

In fact, given that New York City is hardly known for being the cleanest of cities in the best of times, you might even say that the Department of Sanitation functions more effectively as part of the police state than it does in providing for the public good. That is, it removed all garbage cans with an efficiency I’ve never witnessed when it comes to keeping the city clean. I’m not blaming the workers for this, but there’s clearly a well-funded budget for the police function of removing garbage cans (which must have required a lot of overtime), while there’s an insufficient budget when it comes to what you’d expect would be the Department of Sanitation’s main function—sanitation. So, the issue is not only that the police have been increasingly responsible for “solving” public problems for which they are uninterested and ill-equipped, but also, that the agencies tasked with solving non-police public problems—like sanitation—are increasingly coming to adopt a police role. And it’s in their police role that funding exists.

All told, New York City can’t provide a well-maintained public transportation system, our public education system is woefully underfunded, and even the Department of Sanitation can’t keep our streets clean. But when it comes to their police functions, the state is as efficient as ever. Just ask one of the thousands of disappeared garbage cans, which reappeared just as miraculously as they had gone.

Just don’t ask them for the public good.