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"What does it mean to fight the cops in this moment?"

It means many different things to different people. They show up, do their thing, go back home (unless homeless), or arrested or to the emergency room. When they're in the midst of it, the turmoil, they're mostly struggling to get situational awareness, a few have to fight in self-defense and/or flee to survive confrontation with cops, but few are actually fighting cops.

This is not a martial confrontation, not even an asymmetric one.

These are mass protest, and sometimes true riots, being repressed by cops; they may bring on the national guard, the feds, or even deploy the army or make a gendarmerie (department of interior proposal). This is very common in many countries. In recent years, many similar revolts have happened worldwide.

Mass protests characterized by literal moms and pops, everyday people, showing up mainly just to make an act of presence, a show of numbers. Riots characterized by usually younger people breaking stuff, setting fire to stuff, and looting. Both have been happening, sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes one leading into the other.

At no point has any group set out to explicitly fight the cops, other than rhetorically or symbolically. Pelting armored cops with empty water bottles is a non-verbal insult, not an attack. Some committed individuals have directly attacked patrol cars and cops, burnt precincts, union office, etc. but these still remains outliers, as effective, visible, and inspiring as they may be.

The meaning of fighting and cops have not changed, what’s changed is this moment, which is one of revolt, which is characterized by chaos, confusion and unforeseen emergent opportunities. Those that had plans or intention to attack the police during peacetime or “normality” can carry them out with adjustments if necessary. Most people are not those, including the ones having this discussion in the most public death-trap for anything that would wish to be private and secret; the internet.

"Are we just punching a fist?"

I didn't like that metaphor, so I'll be literal:

People are walking in with cardboard signs and getting eyes blown off, heads cracked by batons, a bunch of bruises, lungs irritated, or getting arrested. Escalation in this direction is prelude to greater tragedy.

Look at Maidan, look at Chile, people getting murdered by rifle, corpses dragged out of sight in unmarked vans. I'm not saying this will inevitably happen, but U.S.A. is not exempt from the possibility of this sort of thing happening. In fact, it was unprovoked murders by police in broad daylight that sparked this recent wave of revolt. Now they have plenty of excuses, not that they ever needed them.

"And if we are, what is the value of that punching?"

How you value it depends on who you are. Some people will feel they have overcome a fear, some will get an adrenaline kick out of it, some will regret it the rest of their lives, some will have suffered the same consequences or worse and have no regrets.

To an anarchist the value of attacking the police may be all of the above, but in principle, it's so that it can't do its job, be it for a little while by disrupting its activity, or forever by deluding themselves that dreams are possible.

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