Despite 63% of voters in the state expressing opposition to the anti-protest bills HB1 and SB484 they are coming closer to becoming a reality in the political landscape of Florida. Florida Senate majority leader Simpson is using procedural maneuvers to bypass committees where this bill can be impeded. It looks as though it will only need to be debated in one Republican-majority committee in order to pass. Meanwhile, we’re seeing the situation for Floridians get worse – evictions are moving forward in our communities despite the eviction moratorium, big Texas oil companies are being given access to our protected natural lands for drilling, toxic waste from the poorly-maintained Piney Point is pouring in to Tampa bay, trans rights are being threatened, our politicians are being implicated in sex trafficking scandals….is it any wonder that they’re trying to silence us in the midst of their widespread failure?
One Struggle and Combative Uprising collaborated to bring folks together at the Can’t Criminalize Protest event on March 14 to bring awareness to Florida’s Combating Public Disorder Act and organize resistance to it. We are reflecting on the event and considering how to move forward after HB1 has already passed in the House and it’s Senate companion SB484 is advancing. We reflect, criticize and self-criticize to build unity within our organization and with folks outside of it. It is through constant assessment and adaptation that our political line can become more powerful and more relevant to the moment. Our objective for the event was to educate people about the bills and bring our perspective around building resistance to them. We wanted to connect our local history of struggle to the moment, and to cultivate combative, independent organization in general. So now we are asking ourselves, and you all, how close did we get to that objective? How do we improve for the future?
We first want to thank everyone, especially organizers with Cienfuegos Distro, YDSA, and The Sound who came out to stand up for our rights and in solidarity! Also to Protect the Land who made sure that those protestors who were arrested were released from jail. The fire that is lit in those moments when we come together to share perspectives, lift each other’s voices, and contribute to the history of progressive mobilization is just a spark of the blaze we need to transform society. The connections that we make in those spaces will keep us going as we fight to represent the interests of the people, and it’s these connections that will keep us safe from the increasing repression of the ruling class.
We have been reaching out and opening ourselves to feedback and criticism. To those who have said that the event felt organized and safe, we can only improve on this as we build on the connections made with the folks there, and begin to share, collaborate and construct more independent organizations! As fascism advances in Florida, we are being shown clearly that we are safest when we are organized. No matter what happens in the Senate, Florida “representatives” have made it clear that their priority is not our health or safety, but rather our continued domination. You can call your Senators and sign petitions to stop this bill, but our real power ignites when we come together as a social force. The ruling class will continue their attempts to silence anything seen as a danger to their ability to dominate and profit off of us. This means that we have to be willing to become more tactful, focused and deliberate in how we fight back – work that can only be done as a collective! This doesn’t just have to mean putting together protests, starting theory-reading clubs, or organizing mutual aid programs. It can begin as simply as talking with your friends, coworkers or neighbors to learn what issues affect us and what we have the power to do about it.
This is why we put on events, create content for IG and generally share our perspective. We realize that as a collective we are the strongest and the safest. Collective action requires building unity on tactics and forms of resistance, prioritizing the interests of the group before our own. It is in this setting that we truly find a democratic way of engaging with each other. The democracy that we’re offered under capitalism is a sham – after all, state representatives are doing everything they can to bypass public opinion in favor of this widely unpopular bill. In our forms of resistance and organization, we have to stress democratic engagement and actively resist the individualism that capitalism necessitates and rewards. We must build principled relationships that allow us to identify and demarcate from individualism and that comes from unity.
Throughout the protest, our goal was to be guided by the unity of the collective force that was present. This was limited, because we were not one big organization – which is a good thing! We want to build a movement that is dynamic and diverse. However, any lack in unity is a vulnerability that can be used against us by our enemies. When the police arrived on N Miami Ave and demanded that we move to the sidewalk or we would be subject to arrest, the decision to follow their orders was an attempt at assessing and acting on the perceived collective unity at the time. Marshalls and organizers have agreed since that we should have been more prepared – both in how to handle the collective and how to respond to the police. When four protestors were arrested, some people broke away from the back of the crowd and started running, endangering themselves. We ended up under an overpass and behind a railing, vulnerable to being trapped by law enforcement. Our ability to protect each other and the forward momentum of the march was impeded. We should have been more prepared for this moment, and made sure we had the unity to act as a collective.
The police are reactionary, racist fascists. Several of the people who helped with the event expressed being disturbed by the excessive response of the cops and the aggressive approach that they took to the protestors in the street. Purposeful defiance of police orders is a tactic that has been and will be a part of our resistance, but it is most powerfully utilized when done as a unified collective. When the protestors decided to go against the actions of the collective, our capacity to keep both them and the rest of the people in the mobilization safe was weakened. Our role was to anticipate this as a possibility and to communicate the importance of collective action in advance, something that we failed to do. This, to us, affirms the importance of being organized based on unity. It is not that the organizer’s decision to follow the police was necessarily correct, but that whatever decision is made is most powerful if done as a group, based in unity.
We’d like to encourage folks who were present, heard about the event or are curious about it to reach out with questions, comments, criticisms and more!
The more we expose disagreements and disunity between each other, the better prepared we are to show out as a unified force to combat our real enemies – the capitalist class!
