How the Cop in Our Heads Sabotages Protests
And How to Stop It
By: Vix Burgett-Prunty
Even when we’re fighting against oppressive systems, we often recreate those same systems in how we organize. The "cop in our heads". That internalized voice of authority and control. Shows up in protests more than we’d like to admit. If we don’t confront it, we’ll keep undermining our own movements. It's understandable. We want to keep people safe. I have those feelings too. It's also true that there are a lot of people who are not safe right now. It's going to take European Americans stepping out of their comfort zone in protest to stop it.
This isn’t just some abstract idea. Scholars, like Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy, have shown how racism and capitalism train us to police each other. Angela Davis has written about how the prison industrial complex shapes even our ideas about justice and safety. These systems don’t just exist out there. They live in our minds, in our daily interactions.
Look how people criticize Black Lives Matter protests for being "too disruptive"? That’s the cop mind talking. Historians have shown how similar criticisms were used to suppress resistance movements throughout European and American history. The truth is, as Frederick Douglass famously said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." Disruption isn’t just effective, it’s necessary.
The cop mind shows up in subtler ways too. When we demand that protesters be "perfect victims" with spotless records, we’re repeating what Patricia Hill Collins exposed how respectability politics are used to control marginalized groups, specifically Black women. There's more than one right way to be human. When we prioritize order over justice, we’re falling into what Stuart Hall called the "law and order" trap. Valuing comfort over liberation.
So how do we fight this? First, we have to recognize these patterns in ourselves. As Audre Lorde wrote, "The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house." We can’t use policing tactics to fight policing. Every time I feel these thoughts coming into my mind I have to remind myself how much I just like being told what to do.
Instead, we need to build what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls "abolition geography" organizing that creates new ways of living together. We need to follow the lead of movements like those documented by Robin D.G. Kelley in Freedom Dreams, where collective care replaces punishment. We also e need to remember what the Combahee River Collective taught us, that real solidarity means fighting all systems of oppression at the same time. We need each other more than ever. For all of our well-beings.
This isn’t about being perfect activists. As Adrienne Maree Brown writes, we have to "move at the speed of trust." It’s about daily practice. Catching ourselves when we judge too quickly, when we value comfort over justice, when we repeat the systems we claim to oppose. Millions of European Americans isolated themselves from their friends, family, and community because they no longer knew who they could trust after Nov. 5th. This trust deficit remains.
The revolution starts in our minds. Every time we choose solidarity over suspicion, every time we value people over property, every time we trust our communities more than the cops in our heads, we build something truly liberatory.
Who's streets
Our streets
Who's city
Our city
Dedicated to Mrs. Howard, Ms. Ida, Malea, Anjalitta, Destinee, Sierra, and Charlie