NYPD DECLARE FROZEN ZONE AFTER BUTCHERING 16 YEAR OLD KIMANI GRAY

 
the last declared “Frozen Zone,” meaning the one before the riots to protest the murder of Kimani Grey was right after the eviction of Zuccotti. so what we see here is police-force creating a border, a zone of exceptionality in which regular laws do not apply, and wherein a regular Citizen can be arrested for “simply being there,” reducing them to bare life

 
‘sorry, your protesting is disrupting the smooth flows of Capital, and since thats what we cops are here to protect and serve, were going to have to serve your corporal punishment and throw you in a crowded jail cell without you knowing when you’ll get out. by the way, WE REALLY LOVE DOIN THAT!’
 
what we see is the extinguishing of potential of true political moments before they can occur. Remember, 
Rancière says politics is, 
 
“Whatever breaks with the tangible configuration whereby parties and parts or lack of them are defined by a presupposition that, by definition, has no place in that configuration. Political activity is whatever shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a places’ destination…political activity is always a mode of expression that undoes the perceptible divisions of police order.” 
 
 The political is not understood as such. It is the not-yet-seen, the image that is not yet spectacle, the speech that is not understood yet as  discourse– the political is the rumblings and utterings waiting to be decoded. Riots, especially riots of brown bodies, will ALWAYS be dismissed as not-political, not-thought… 
 
and of course, Ground Zero is the example par excelence: the reduction of all potential politics, the final straw that leads us into a state-of-exception, a permanent “Frozen Zone.” In a way, it is completely ironic to have to officially call this strip of East Flatbush a “Frozen Zone” because, unofficially, it already is a potential crime to be a body anywhere in NYC. Image