In the last year of protests against the US-Israel genocidal war on Gaza, one of the main things holding back militancy is the presence of protest marshals. The nonprofits, reformist careerist campus activists, and Leftist organizations like the PSL and FRSO make sure that protests under their banner are policed by their volunteer marshals to stay within the limits of what their protest permits will allow.

At the DNC protests this past August in Chicago, hundreds of protest marshals were deployed by the Coalition to March on the DNC to literally make sure protests never got too close to the Death and Nakba Coronation or stepped outside of the city government approved march route. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling praised their actions, saying “they are policing, basically, their own protests group” and “they are making sure their people stay in line” (see the tellingly titled CBS News report “Chicago police credit protest marshals with helping during DNC protest marches”).

Protest marshals claim “we keep us safe,” but as we’ve seen at the DNC protests and elsewhere, these volunteer cops in hi-vis vests collaborate with the actual police to make sure protests don’t get beyond the limits acceptable to the ruling class, sometimes going so far as to hand defiant protesters over to the police for arrest. That some of these protest marshals are people of color doesn’t make them any better, it just makes them a continuation of a policing tactic started by British colonialism in India. Moreover, 
their high school hall monitor attire and the moniker “marshal” are embarrassments to the militant protest tradition.

The conclusion we must draw from this state of affairs is that if we want protests to pose a threat to the rulers and stand a chance of stopping injustice, protest marshals must be abolished. Towards that end, protest marshals should be exposed, publicly shamed, and delegitimized. No organization claiming to be radical or revolutionary should endorse a protest that uses marshals, and protest marshals should be actively driven out of resistance movements. When protest marshals attempt to keep protesters in line, resisting them is justified.

With this statement, Behind Enemy Lines is making protest marshal abolitionism a dividing line between who are our friends and who are our enemies. If you want protest to go beyond the safety of staying behind police barricades, sticking within the parameters of permits, and following police orders, then become a protest marshal abolitionist. For organizations, that means making a public statement of principles on protest marshals and practicing protest marshal abolitionism. For everyone 
on the right side of the struggle, as individuals and in organizations, that means binding together, whatever our ideological and political differences, to oppose the use of protest marshals and defend those who face repression—from volunteer or real cops—for taking militant action against injustice.

From the West Bank to the US, collaborationists serve imperialism!
It is right to rebel against protest marshals!