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Fuck 12 Zine: 12 Reasons We Reject Surveillance Bureaucracy

Download the online zine in pdf form here.

Download the printable version here. NOTE: PRINT ZINE ON BOTH SIDES – FLIP PAPER ON SHORT EDGE.

  1. Police reform is deadly. Every cop who kills someone is a failed experiment in reform.
  1. What is surveillance bureaucracy? It’s the idea that surveillance will be fine if we create rules for it. This is dangerous because it normalizes surveillance and make it harder to dismantle.
  1. Who is pushing for surveillance bureaucracy? It’s mostly lawyers and legal organizations. Even if these organizations don’t like surveillance, it’s difficult for them to think outside the system and to criticize their own historical role.  
  1. Police reformers have said surveillance bureaucracy creates a “seat at the table.” Fuck that. We want to dismantle the table. 
  1. Surveillance bureaucracy lets police say their work is approved by public input. It gives them a claim of legitimacy for their violence. Our people don’t want to be surveilled at all. 
  1. Whenever people rise up, police reformers and police quickly find common ground in harmful reforms. This happened in 2015 with body cameras. It’s happening again now. 
  1. No one is taking to the streets for increased bureaucracy and police self-auditing. The people want to defund police and dismantle surveillance.                        
  1. Surveillance originates in enforcing enslavement and apartheid. Police reform is inherently anti-Black because it improves an institution whose role has always been racial domination.
  1. Surveillance bureaucracy trusts police to self-audit and self-govern. Police can never be trusted. 
  1. Surveillance bureaucracy is all about giving police new rules and criteria. We know this just leads police to invest more money and personnel into monitoring and avoiding “compliance.”
  1. The masses are more skeptical of police now than ever before. We should use that growing power to abolish different forms of surveillance, not just regulate them.
  1. The real way to resist surveillance is using grassroots organizing to dismantle police systems. Unlike trusting police to govern themselves, this puts power in the hands of the people to build a safer world without policing.
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