This is important, so I'd like to try to illustrate this chart with some of my experiences.

My first experience with police violence was in 2004. I was 12. We were protesting the Iraq War. Two things to know: 1) police tear gas firings were not well documented and... https://twitter.com/IPM_HQ/status/1301287185610670081

2) San Francisco, hippie paradise, contained people who would scream in a 12 year old's face for being anti war. It is very hard to explain this culture without living through it; my middle school teachers mocked me for being anti-war. Nobody had to be told to crush opposition

While nobody today would be surprised at the police tear gassing a 12 year old (I've seen as young as 4 in Portland lately) a lot of people were horrified. But it really established for me that the cops were not the good guys

Fast forward a few years and I'm still at it. By 15 I've read The Communist Manifesto and I don't understand it. But I liked it. So I'm going out and performing more and more radical action. SF is a great place for this. But I'm noticing more cops are meeting us at smaller events

The real shock is when I went to Oakland for a protest for the first time and the situation escalated. Oakland organizers are amazing and they do not fuck around. But that's when I saw my first flashbang and the first time I ever got hit by a rubber bullet

Fast forward to Occupy: cops were extremely emboldened to harass people. Occupy encampments were under constant threat from the police, and police would frequently pull weapons to try to harass people out of certain areas that they had a right to be in

The trouble with that was the same problem with Occupy overall: there wasn't any concrete goal. Nevertheless the night they stormed the encampment they used SWAT gear and military tactics to arrest 100+ people, most of whom were sleeping

So from 2004-2012 the police have been brutally oppressing movements. I've described the police being more brutal over time, but not dramatically so. So you'll see the spike roughly right after I'm talking about there. What changed?

There's a variety of answers. One is the fucking bullshit border wall that was started under Bush. Ironically you can see Obama gladly finish it. But militarization of local PDs is how you boost border militancy without actually having to deploy the army.

Obama, in fact, unbanned some military equipment from being sold to police departments! What a swell guy.

You can find a lot of examples of heavily militarized police in the coming years. I sure did. But the most prominent example I can think of is Standing Rock

While possibly the most incredible picture ever, the army is not here. This is the police. They had all this on hand.

Ferguson activists were treated much the same way, brutally assaulted at every opportunity and hit by tear gas. You can see the increase in tear gas use in Ferguson lines up directly with the purchases that lead this thread. Police then, as now, protect right wing vigilantes

I'll summarize here. Do I think this is a radical new evolution of police? No. It's not even new for them to use chemical weapons against civilians. But this is the first time society at large has questioned that legitimacy, and they're trying to beat us into submission

This was all partially a byproduct of the military-industrial complex. But it doesn't matter. Everyone always knew the implications of that were that we'd be occupied at home and abroad. If you live in a military town that's essentially what it is

The biggest difference I see today is the level of surveillance on both sides. If I tell you a cop popped tear gas at me and my friends in a San Francisco street in 2006, you just have to believe me because there aren't any records. Much harder to deny

On the other hand, the cops have the same tools. Facial recognition software has already identified people through tight masks. Cell phone tracking is nearly universal. Contact tracing for COVID-19 has been weaponized by the police