This article isn't without

This article isn't without value in considering questions facing small organizations of volunteers.

The problem with this article is it reveals the typical limitations, biases and ignorance of many of today's self proclaimed Anarchists , especially N. American anarchists. These orbit around this problem-these people have little social analysis and so fall back on innermost questions of formal process and organization. The content of social struggle is missing, the reasons for the organization and social situation it was born of are missing.

I assume thats why the author thinks copwatch was an anarchist organization, simply because it contained self-proclaimed anarchists. An organization that monitors the police on a legal and human rights basis is actually more like an NGO or opposition party, from the perspective of the social reality in our countries. In some countries they would be massacred, but in others they would be paid by the state. Whatever its value, there was no really radical content to copwatch, and this flows from its origins and constituency, its role and ideology, not just from its organizational problems.

Copwatch was not a result of the self organization of people typically victimized by police, or tied to any other ki.d of self organization of local exploited people. In every city I have seen Copwatch in, it was a mini populist (though it is not too popular) meets student-type human rights group, with a few paranoid privacy activists thrown in. Throw in a bit of social work-since they do hit the streets and advocate.

The anarchist members of copwatch seem unperturbed by the fact that copwatch indirectly enforces the law, and fights (though ineffectively) against corruption in policing-and (unlike the black panthers for example) that's pretty much it.

The implications of this are serious. Anyone with some class/historical analysis can see that the legal system is ALREADY, by definition and origin, an abuse of the exploited in society, and that policing is as well-IN ITS LEGAL FORM. Copwatch is unconsciously fighting for the US to become like Denmark, or similar countries with extremely low police corruption-where police screw everyone and enforce class scoiety by the letter of the law. This article should be of more value to volunteer groups, non profits, ngo, co-ops, grassroots lobbies etc.

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