Artifact: "Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere"

This was posted at the corner of Lark and Washington streets in Albany NY, outside a bank building that was recently converted into a church.

It's a produce of Crimethinc., an anarchist entity that's been around since at least the 1990s that currently describes itself as "a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age. They sympathize with the global "antifa" movement, but it's unclear whether they endorse "antifa" efforts to banish "alt-right" or just plain "right" speakers from college campuses. The premise of the poster is that police are the same everywhere, whether it's a capitalist republic or a totalitarian dictatorship. A moral equivalence is implied between political dissidents, shoplifters and squatters. Crimethinc. rejects the premise that police are essential to a civilized society. The poster argues that killings by police make a mockery of the pro-police claim that "without you we'd all be killing each other," but the pretty clear threat that "You won't fuck with us much longer" belies the implicit claim that police are the actual violent element in society. I took this picture on May 12; I haven't checked since then to see whether the poster is still in place. A few blocks away, on the Dana Park pedestrian island, a poster calling on people to address police in "the only language they understand," and showing a bullet blasting through a police helmet, was up for some time, and may still be up now.