Being that I spent much of my adolescence and early adulthood in Minnesota, I am deeply invested in the political struggle unfolding there regarding the Minneapolis city charter amendment on policing. The Minnesota Reformer offers a helpful summary of the amendment’s basic dimensions:
If passed, the charter amendment would remove the police department from the charter and replace it with a new department that combines public safety services across the city including mental health professionals, violence prevention workers and police officers.
The most significant changes would be the shift in power away from the mayor, who currently has complete control over the department, and the elimination of the position of police chief. Instead of a police chief, the mayor would nominate and the city council would appoint a commissioner to oversee the new department. It would also eliminate the minimum police staffing levels required by the charter — currently 17 officers per 10,000 residents.
Though the charter amendment on policing does eliminate the existing administrative apparatus commanding the police force, it does not eliminate policing per se. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, writing an op-ed in support of the charter, clarified that the amendment would preserve armed officers even in a reconfigured Minneapolis Office of Public Safety:
“We still need armed officers to respond appropriately to dangerous situations. The amendment will free them up to focus on that work while mental-health professionals, social workers and violence-reduction specialists respond to calls about nonviolent folks in crisis, panhandlers, the unhoused— and fake $20 bills. What if that had happened for George Floyd?”
Attorney General Ellison offers a crucial caveat — that armed officers are necessary — an assertion many activist proponents of abolition are sure to reject. Such a dismissal would be a grave error, however. While the language of the amendment would allow for the complete elimination of police officers, like Attorney General Ellison, I wouldn’t recommend such a step at this juncture.
Addressing the Anti-Charter Amendment Naysayers
Much can be said regarding the process by which this amendment made it to the ballot, but what’s clear is that it offers an opportunity to politically redefine policing and greatly expand democratic governance. The legislative body (the city council) would be granted political oversight alongside the executive branch (the mayor), thus enabling more routes for the public to politically contest how policing is practiced in the city.
Opponents of the amendment consistently reject the expansion of democratic process from a variety of viewpoints. There are activist groups, such as Communities United Against Police Brutality, which oppose the amendment using similar talking points as the conservatives, albeit with different motivations and emphasis.
On the conservative side, Don and Sondra Samuels, leaders of the lawsuit which attempted to remove the proposed amendment from the ballot, claimed the amendment would:
“Remove the mayor’s ‘complete power’ over the police, giving the head of public safety 14 bosses with no single person responsible for overseeing law enforcement in Minneapolis, effectively eliminating political accountability for law—enforcement actions.”
This argument is laughably erroneous, but let’s earnestly examine the Samuels’ claim that having the mayor nominate a commissioner to be appointed with the consent of the city council is tantamount to “eliminating political accountability for law-enforcement actions.”
First, sharing appointment power between the executive and legislative branches is a standard separation of powers arrangement of U.S. governance. The separation of powers is a form of political accountability under liberal democratic governance, and not its absence. For example, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution provides that the U.S. President shall make nominations and the U.S. Senate may confirm them1, which is precisely the type of power-sharing arrangement contemplated by the Minneapolis charter amendment.
Further, introducing the city council into the appointment process would provide a democratic check on the mayor’s authority to single-handedly determine the political substance of public safety leadership. Ironically, by checking unilateral authority within the executive, the amendment advances political accountability, the very same principle the obstructionist Samuels supposedly wish to preserve. The other conservative arguments against the amendment are equally obtuse, serving only to extinguish the potential for transformation despite their protests otherwise.
I hold liberal democracy in no special regard. I’m a proletarian partisan, a revolutionary, not because I disregard liberal democracy, but because I understand it. There are times which arise when proletarian partisanship must advance itself within liberal democratic governance and even defend it. I believe that this charter amendment on policing is one such moment.
It is very clear that conservative interests wish to prevent the deepening of democratic governance in the wake of the popular rebellion following George Floyd’s murder in summer 2020. In addition to the amendment on policing, there is also an amendment which would essentially neutralize the city council and reform Minneapolis into a strong-mayor city. This arrangement is the preference of many powerful interests, one reason being that it would become easier to buy political power because it’d be concentrated in a single office. The fight over these two amendments reveal the determination of the ruling class, which clings to power despite having no vision for the future.
Pick Up the Gun to Put Down the Gun
The essence of politics is the ability to distinguish friends from enemies, and the resolve to fight the enemy to the end. In this case it is not about antagonizing all police, so much as it is about preventing fascist consolidation among police. What matters is whether policing submits to the democratic authority of the people, or it rejects democratic process and raises the gun above the people. That’s what this Minneapolis charter amendment struggle is really about. However, for the amendment to work, a positive vision of the use of force and the nature and role of policing must be cultivated among the masses.
Mao is perhaps best known by his famous aphorism, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Yet, most people do not keep reading, as Mao’s very next sentence is “Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.” In the United States, the gun governs and not the people – that’s the message sent with every police killing. What’s important is to govern the gun, and not be dominated by it.
It may seem counterintuitive, but we must pick up the gun to put down the gun. To pick up the gun it is not necessary to use or even possess arms. What we have is a political problem. What must be grasped is the politics commanding the gun and not necessarily the gun itself, and by doing so be in a position to replace its supremacy.
When Attorney General Ellison lays out that armed officers will remain to respond to dangerous situations, while also outlining the myriad of social scenarios in which armed forces would not be deployed, he is politically governing the gun. That’s a crucial example he’s setting. Also consider the remarks of U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, who also wrote an op-ed supporting the charter amendment.
While Attorney General Ellison took a conciliatory tone and spoke in terms of starting a “conversation,” Representative Omar provided a clear identification of the enemy. “One of the biggest impediments to change is the Minneapolis Police Federation,” she wrote, further polemicizing against the “unelected Charter Commission or police union that block grassroots change.” Representative Omar continued her lesson in the friend/enemy distinction by noting the history of the city charter:
“The applicable part of the City Charter was written in 1961, under pressure from the police union. And unlike almost every other city in the country, it mandates how the city funds its police forces with no flexibility over what types of personnel it can employ or the number of officers on the job. The constraints and failures of the current city charter led us to this moment. Leaders and unelected commissions who have failed Minneapolis shouldn't be given a voice over residents of Minneapolis. The charter amendment would allow the people of Minneapolis to deploy qualified professionals to serve the city we live in today, not 60 years ago.”
Attorney General Ellison and Representative Omar are demonstrating how to advance democratic governance of the gun within a liberal democratic framework. Even though the liberal democratic framework cannot resolve the contradiction, their skillful examples play an important role in opening possibility for deeper change.
We cannot cede political leadership to the reactionaries. If the progressive elements in the city abandon the democratic governance of state-run policing then policing will further consolidate under private sector command. Such an outcome would cede the political leadership of policing to a range of private interests, including wealthy benefactors and fascist ideologues. The potential — and likely reality — of reactionary violence perpetuated by these elements would be extreme, as would the probability that these sectors would serve as the reserves for any fascist attacks on democratic governance a la the January 6th attack on the capitol.
To abandon the democratic governance of the gun is political suicide.
The Consequences of Abolishing the Iraqi Army
While I support the charter amendment on policing in principle, there is no guarantee that people actually take the initiative and seize the opportunity for expanded governance as the amendment anticipates. There is a great deal of confusion among those who wish to see the transformation of public safety, as it is easier to condemn what exists than it is to construct anew. One great hurdle which must be overcome is the reticence among some to even consider preserving armed police among the new Public Safety department.
Yet, even if the city police force were permanently disbanded, policing will not go away. Further, the police personnel who would be summarily fired by a scorched earth approach to this charter amendment would also not simply disappear into the ether.
The political implications of such a move should be considered because they are not without precedent. In many ways, the Iraq War demonstrates the perils of haphazardly dispersing the governance of armed forces. According to General Jim Mattis, in the wake of the near total annihilation of the Iraqi military apparatus, the Bush administration faced a crucial decision. With the Iraqi army militarily defeated, what was to come of the soldiers, officers, support staff, and administrators of what was at one time the world’s fourth largest military?
“Outside the booths, thousands of dismissed soldiers were lined up, waiting to be paid their stipend to return to their unit’s barracks. The payment was the idea of my Army civil affairs officer. I concurred. They had no money and no job prospects, and I certainly did not want them taking up arms against us. Pat escorted me along the line.
“Take your pick, sir,” Pat said. “Military police, engineers, infantry, even a commando company—you name it and I can have it ready to deploy in three days. Every soldier here wants to be put back to work.”
One option was to permanently disband all remaining Iraqi army personnel, immediately abolishing one of the strongest governing apparatuses in Iraq. The other choice was to wage an ideological and cultural struggle to isolate the antagonistic elements among the army ranks while redirecting the bulk of the holdover personnel into new positions within a reconstructed U.S.-led Iraqi state. General Mattis reveals what happened:
“It was not to be. Without consulting our military commanders in the field, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army and banned most members of the Baath Party from government positions. Under Saddam, technocrats had kept their jobs by belonging to the party. We could have weeded out the oppressors and die-hard Baathists without slicing off the sinews of governance, public services, and security. Demobilizing the Iraqi Army instead of depoliticizing it set the most capable group of men in the country on an adversarial course against us.”
The truth of the matter – as in whether or not the politics as Mattis characterizes them could in fact have been realized had his inclinations been followed by U.S. command – is besides the point. The follies of imperialism often reveal key principles and insights. In this case, the liquidation of the Iraqi army set the stage for the Islamic State. Beginning around 2010, the top leadership of the Islamic State in Iraq has been “populated by former Iraqi officers who were removed from their positions when the Iraqi army was disbanded in 2003.”
Though the U.S. is obviously not Iraq, it is not inconceivable that the mishandling of the contradiction with the police could lead to the consolidation of reactionary forces capable of overthrowing democratic governance. There are fascist and fascist-adjacent personnel operating within the police and armed forces of the state apparatus. They must be politically defeated and uprooted. To do so, it is necessary to split the ranks of the police and encircle the reactionaries, similar to General Mattis’ proposed maneuver in Iraq, except without the imperialist political content. In addition to isolating fascists, partisans must win over democratically-inclined elements amongst the police, not necessarily over to the side of revolution, but over to a basic submission to democratic authority.
There is already broad support for reactionary policing, with the Thin Blue Line flag being displayed by millions in the U.S. — including on police uniforms. The Minneapolis charter amendment, if administered properly, could serve as a beacon of democratic governance in a nation sliding to antisocial self-annihilation. I don’t know what the outcome will be, but what is clear is that now is the time to advance.
Best wishes to my friends in Minneapolis, I’m with you in spirit.
The President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”