(This was something I wrote in December for the Evergreen listserve. It was in response to an e-mail by someone who was harassed by the police after a jay walking ticket. I thought it might give some background and depth to my claim that the riot has historical roots.)

We are all oppressed not criminals. (December 1, 2007)

Did you know that the US has the most prisoners of any country? 2,078,570 to be exact, with a total US population of 303,321,825. Doing complex math, that equates to one in every 146 people are in jail in this country. That is more prisoners than any country and also the highest percentage of people in jail. For example our mortal enemy Iran has 163,526 prisoners and 71,208,000 for their total population. Again using complex math, I arrive at one prisoner for every 435 people. The closest to the US proportionately is Russia with 846,967 prisoners and 142,499,000 population for one prisoner for every 168 people. China is second for the total number of prisoners with 1,549,000 but with a population of 1,322,245,331 their proportion drops to one in every 854. Of course these numbers aren't exact (are we counting Guantanamo, or secret CIA jails?) but they shouldn't be to far off.
 
Our court system is totally corrupt. It's not corrupt in the bribery and paying off of cops kind of way, although it is in that way more than most people imagine, but in the fact that it is a legalized system set up to oppress the poor. Sure rich people on the rarest of occasion get in trouble, but they have lawyers who handle everything and get lesser charges, fines and prison terms. It equates roughly to the unjust nature of a flat tax.
 
What I mean is the value of the penalty for the same "crime" committed by a rich person and a poor person varies greatly. For example, a college student jaywalks and gets a $100 ticket, let's say that student is a lucky person in Olympia and actually has a job washing dishes and makes around $8 per hour. Now let's say that a lawyer from Seattle gets a $100 jaywalking ticket (not that the police would do that to a lawyer). The average median hourly wage for a lawyer in Seattle is $72.88. So the value of the penalty for the student is 12.5 hours of work and for the lawyer it is 1.4. The lawyer passes the ticket to the secretary and says "write a check and mail this off please" and forgets about it. The student has no secretary, has no time because of work at night and school during the day, and has no money to pay the fine. The penalty for them is nine times more in adjusted cost then the penalty for the lawyer for the exact same ticket and if you factor in the hassle to try and contest the stupid thing, which is more difficult for the student, then the cost goes up as it potentially goes down. Factoring in the time value, travel costs, lost of work time, court fees, the potentially reduced ticket costs, (not to forget the powerlessness, humiliation and forced submission to beg over something ridiculous), the punitative value remains high. If the lawyer was charged $900 for jaywalking I think he or she would shit a brick and cry injustice but they don't comprehend that it is proportionately what the minimum wage worker is charged.
 
We are taught in this culture to cooperate with oppression. It's not the student's fault that the police and court system profiles and preys on the poor to make the poor submissive and to make themselves rich. What I would suggest is to be as difficult as possible with the police and courts during those few and specific times they are profiling and being repressive because they might learn that we aren't easy victims anymore. If you refuse to sign the ticket in front of them or repeat everything the officer says or play some other game with them then it'll be fun for you and annoying to them. It might even provoke them into making a mistake that you can benefit from, like punching you in the face. Remember, there is a difference between being difficult, being disrespectful, and being criminal and I am advocating being difficult only. Probably you'll just get in bigger trouble, but when that happens do the next best thing, don't show up in court or be extremely difficult in court. Sure it'll stick around and cause you trouble in the future but if you ignore those troubles, then good for you. Eventually that jaywalking ticket might mean 10 days in jail and that will be a bummer but you can laugh the whole time and think of ways to be annoying to the oppressors while you are there. Oh, and are you seriously worried about your permanent record? What is this high school? It's not like you can afford to buy a house here anyway, and any job that would look down on your jaywalking ticket or your trespassing because of a protest ticket is a job you don't want. In fact those types of unpaid tickets should be badges of honour for any progressive person, brag about them, write about them, convince others of the problems with our criminal justice system.
 
If you commit a bad crime, violence against senior citizens, women, or children for example, then you deserve what you get, and should accept your fate because you suck, or you sucked for a moment. You might get nailed with a stupidly long sentence that is over the top and you can argue for what you, your community and your victim would consider fair, but face the bad times.
 
Please don't always be difficult with cops and courts. You also should reward cops when they are helpful, like when a cop breaks up a fight or helps you get into your car when you are locked out. Thank them sincerely; bring them a box of doughnuts the next day. Be especially respectful and mourn if they die in service. They are humans and part of a community, dehumanizing others works both ways and ultimately the better you know each other the more civil your relationship, a cop you give doughnuts to is less likely to beat and humiliate you. This is not hypocritical, we are dynamic people, and we can respect and stand up to the police at the same time. They think they are doing their jobs when they oppress you and at the end of the day when that cop hangs up her or his hat after electrocuting protesters of the war, he or she might complain to their significant other that they hate their job. You might even go and get a beer with them afterwards and make jokes and complain about the system and discuss your dreams for change. The cop might even be rooting for us to change the system to make it so the cop no longer has to be shitty anymore and instead just be a hero. Or maybe that individual cop is a racist sociopath who likes beating and humiliating people, who knows?
 
I don't know the details of what happened, but I won't play blame the victim. I just know that it sounds like profiling, needless wasted tax money and harassment. Jay walking tickets and other similar little petty tickets are around so that cops can have a reason to harass anyone they want. I'm in Ecuador right now ( 7,716 prisoners 13,341,000 people for a ratio of one per 1,729) there are cops on every other corner with shotguns, walls with glass shards on top surrounding every house. It is a different situation for sure and violent crime is something you don't have to worry about, the people aren't violent. Of course the class division between rich and poor is unimaginable. Minimum wage is around $170 per month and yet there are billionaires nearly as wealthy as Gates. The cops are here for two reasons to calm the poor and protect rich people's property. It is obvious here that preserving unfair power structures is the name of the game. Of course because 65% of the people are poor the police are generally kinder and more respectful because they themselves are barely not poor and the poor are a large block of people you don't want mad at you. The cops don't make their money off busting people so there is little incentive to do so. And ultimately if the poor revolted, which they have done many times, I think most of these officers would shoulder their arms.
 
Preserving power structures in the US should not be the duty of the cops but it is their main one. I think that if we want to prevent the harassment of people by cops we have to tell them to stop and we have to tell them forcefully. If every time a cop pepper sprayed a protester we had five others stepping forward to stop them they would start thinking twice about what they do. If every time a kid gets targeted with some bullshit we all came over and told the cop to move along they would start to move along eventually.  We'll take some licks but maybe we would give a few of our own. Eventually with solidarity, defiance and education we might one day even reverse the direction that the cops work in. Maybe one day if a rich person got their BMW stolen the police would just ask why they owned such an expensive car and if the port protesters end up dismantling some striker vehicles the police would just say that it isn't their responsibility to protect the federal government.