Amongst those who’ve recently been organizing against state austerity measures and social oppression in Northern California, an expression has emerged: “Revolution in the fall, counterrevolution in the spring.” The phrase attempts to plot the rhythms of protest and its repression in the Bay, where building reclamations, street actions, and brief strikes have taken shape in the months of October and November, while, by March, our energies have tended to be consumed with court support and campaigns against prosecutions. In the UK, the student protests of late 2010 and the subsequent rounds of criminalization followed a similar pattern, although some of the prosecutions have dragged on for almost two years as the Crown Prosecution Services tries again and again to run cases that have previously ended in hung juries (no overall agreement) or have stalled for technical reasons. However, the riots of August 2011 that took place in several cities across the country exploded in the middle of various protest trials: as tough as it was to get people in court to support those charged from the earlier demonstrations and trade union protest, as well as other direct actions, it was and is almost impossible to track the riot cases — more than 3000 arrests and 2000 charges so far — with twenty-four-hour courts running for several days and immediate custody (i.e. no bail) for most, leading to overcrowding and prison riots.

The expression obscures the less predictable tempos and sequences of recent protest, and this year its inadequacy has become particularly evident, as activists have been dealing in recent months with intensifying forms of state repression. In San Francisco, an October demonstration against war and colonial violence was rushed by the police, who struck with batons and arrested those at the front of the march. A few days later, after the arrestees’ supporters had raised thousands of dollars for bail payments, the mug shots of twenty of those who’d been released from custody were published by the San Francisco Weekly. The Examiner described the protesters as members of a “vicious criminal street gang.” The police evidently have decided to invite local newspapers and their readers into the everyday work of punishment and social regulation; the newspaper editors, at least, seem more than willing to oblige. The SFPD has brought in their “Gang Taskforce” to aid in the prosecution of those arrested, who are facing conspiracy charges and have had phone and twitter records subpoenaed. The utterly widespread usage of CCTV cameras in the UK, as well as a complicit and compliant press and a right-wing blog-culture that sees no problem with reposting photos of people and adding their own insinuations, regardless of the presumption of innocence, have done their best to abet the prosecutions of anyone involved in alleged “unrest” of any kind. Train stations were plastered with photos of those wanted for questioning, and police even dropped off printouts of suspected rioters on university campuses, where they were quickly removed and shredded (off-campus) by student activists.

Back in the US, a grand jury investigation of Seattle anarchist and ultra-left communities has been ongoing; two people who’ve refused to testify before the jury remain incarcerated. There’s a sense that similar investigations could soon be launched in other cities. A spirit of generalized anxiety has thus taken hold amongst those who, just last fall, in the midst of expanding encampments, street confrontations, and rolling strikes, seemed to have forced a series of political openings, and to have put police forces, city governments, and university administrations on the defensive.