Police, prison and abolition

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 17, 2020 11:41 am

CONTAINING THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT – DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS PLAY GOOD COP/BAD COP
Posted by MLToday | Jun 16, 2020 | Other Featured Posts | 1

Containing the Black Lives Matter Movement – Democrats and Republicans Play Good Cop/Bad Cop
By Roger D. Harris

Image

June 16, 2020



A long smoldering and now massive popular response to injustice has been catalyzed by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th. Even Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson concedes, “this was without precedent in the modern era.”



A broad consensus critical of the coercive police function of the US state is building. The mass movement around Black Lives Matter has many currents, some reformist and others angling for bigger fish. A sea change may be in the making. In opposition, state officials from the police chief of Ferguson to any number of politicians are making a public show of taking a knee in homage to the movement, while conspiring against it.



In the affluent white community of Larkspur, California, a protester carries a sign saying, “Bad Cop – No Donut,” as whites throughout the US pour out in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Youth protesting for the first time muster into the streets. Articulating the perspective of her generation, George Floyd’s young niece Brooke Williams asks, “when has America ever been great?”



Significantly, small town USA is coming out in solidarity, including hamlets with predominantly white populations of just a few hundred. Many protest leaders are female. Confederate statues are being toppled by the score in Dixie. And no more telling indicator of the depth of the multi-national/ multi-racial movement is NASCAR’s ban on flying the Confederate flag.



The corporate media try to divide the movement into good and bad protesters. Television is flooded with sanitized clips of Martin Luther King preaching peace, when – as those of us involved in those historical struggles knew – King’s message was resistance with non-violence as a tactic. Riots, he explained, are the voice of the unheard.



At ground zero of the Black Lives Matter protests, the Minneapolis third precinct police station was burned to the ground. Responding to grassroots pressure, the Minneapolis city council pledged to defund the police. While the propertied class can and have hired their own private security forces, this radical demand arises organically out of the mass movement and addresses the question of whose interests are served by the coercive arm of the state. Others demand even more fundamental change with community control and abolition of the police.



Attempts to demonize the movement by labelling it as violent have not met with success. The New York Times reports: “In the last two weeks, American voters’ support for the Black Lives Matter movement increased almost as much as it had in the preceding two years.”



Social media have exposed significant acts of violence perpetrated by provocateurs to discredit the genuine movement. Among the provocateurs were uniformed police, white supremacists not in uniform, and uniformed police with white supremacist symbols. This video shows Minneapolis police officers slashing car tires. In this video, Minneapolis police and National Guard rampage through a residential neighborhood screaming “light ‘em up” and lobbing paint canisters into people’s houses. Here police attack peaceful demonstrators.



Republicans, playing the bad cop, and Democrats, playing the good cop, have predictably come to the rescue of the increasingly delegitimized military-police state. Despite a superficial show of bickering, they are united by class allegiance in renewing the Patriot Act and passing ever more astronomical military budgets.



Prominent Republicans unabashedly summoned the police and military to repress the movement. President Trump has threatened to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to allow the military to wage war on its own people. Republican Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas called for sending in the troops to crush the rebellion, describing the demonstrations as “carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.”



In states and cities controlled by Democrats, such as ones presided over by Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, the police response is similar though the rhetoric is not. The difference is mainly that the Democrats wear a velvet glove over the iron fist.



Indicative of the determination of the protests, the show of police force has galvanized rather than intimidated the movement. However, brandishing the stick is not the only tool of the agents of the state. The Democrats are the foremost purveyors of co-optation.



House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, and company staged a photo-op taking a knee wearing kente cloth sashes for George Floyd. Even Joe Biden briefly emerged to film a video of pious homilies about racial justice. He is the same individual who championed the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights and the 1994 Crime bills. Political economist Rob Urie credits Biden with being “the national political figure most responsible for the police practices that led to the murder of George Floyd,” second only to Bill Clinton.



Margaret Kimberly of the Black Agenda Report observes, “the black political class does everything in its power to make sure that nothing much is accomplished at all.” The Congressional Black Caucus, she reports, is making proposals that they know will not pass the Senate or the president, while letting stand legislation such as the Protect and Serve Act, which makes assaulting a police officer a federal offense.



Other Democrats are trying to undermine the Black Lives Matter movement by suggesting that outside agitators are behind it, as did Minneapolis Mayor Frey along with some Republicans. And – I am not making this up – other Democrats as saying, yes, the Russians are stirring the pot to make us Americans look bad. Obama’s former National Security Advisor Susan Rice appeared on CNN talking about a “Russian playbook” and hinting that the Russkies may even be financing the violence. Rice, BTW, may be the next US vice president.



Not to be outdone in the loony department, Republican Senator Rick Scott and backed by the White House accuse Venezuela of being behind the demonstrations. Venezuelan President Maduro tweeted, “The awakening of the American people is not just a protest against the death of George Floyd, it’s against a whole system of racism and structural repression,” demonstrating a deeper understanding of the what is happening in the US than these over-imaginative US politicians.



The Democrats hope not only to contain the Black Lives Matter movement, but to ride it into the White House. As Trump’s prospects ebb with the coronavirus pandemic, a tanking economy, and cities in revolt, the ruling elites will increasingly blame him for the systemic failures of the neoliberal state to provide either for the safety or welfare of its people.



More misfortunes loom on the near horizon, when peoples’ savings run out, unemployment claims are exhausted, eviction moratoriums expire, and the economy fails to bounce back dramatically. Given Trump’s liabilities, even a moribund Democrat – and that’s what the electorate is being offered – will sleepwalk into the White House. Meanwhile, the Black Lives Matter movement has sounded a wake-up call heard around the world.



Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, a human rights group working in solidarity with the social justice movements in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1985.

https://mltoday.com/containing-the-blac ... p-bad-cop/

Well, I dunno about this 'sleepwalking' biz. " Americans want Law & Order, even if they don't know they want it." is a powerful truth for certain demographics..... a direct appeal to liberals . And with a weak, vacillating candidate like Biden who will end up echoing Trump cause that where he's always been there's the likelihood that some will prefer the Real Thing while others walk away in disgust. Just like last time.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 17, 2020 1:03 pm

Image

It’s Time to Kick Police Unions Out of the Labor Movement – They Aren’t Allies

June 17, 2020 orinocotribune AFL-CIO, defound the police, Donald Trump, George Floyd, police unions, Racism, uprising, US decline
Let’s put police unions on a raft and set them adrift. They can reapply for solidarity if they stop abusing the rest of us.

By Hamilton Nola – June 14, 2020

The ultimate power of the labor movement lies in solidarity. Together, working people are strong. So what can the movement do in this moment of national struggle against racism and police violence? The obvious answer is to deny the power of solidarity to police unions, which function as barriers to the very reforms that Americans are now fighting for. The time has come to put police unions on a raft and set them adrift. Perhaps they can reapply for solidarity if they ever stop abusing the rest of us.



Earlier this week, my union, the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), formally called upon the AFL-CIO – America’s largest union coalition, representing 55 unions, including us – to expel police unions from its ranks. (I am one of the 21 elected WGAE council members who unanimously voted to approve this resolution, but I speak here only for myself.) We do not dispute the right of anyone to have a union, but police unions are incompatible with the AFL-CIO’s mission “to vanquish oppression”. For centuries, the police have in fact been the tool of oppression wielded to crush working people. A common thread that runs from striking union members getting their heads bashed in to the tragedy of George Floyd is the presence of aggressive and unaccountable police.

It is worth noting that the AFL-CIO’s own constitution says that affiliated unions can be kicked out if their activities “are consistently directed toward the achievement of the program or purposes of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, terrorism and other forces that suppress individual liberties and freedom of association and oppose the basic principles of free and democratic trade unionism”. When I read those words, I conjure up the image of the combative riot police who unjustly arrested multiple journalists and WGAE members who were peacefully covering the recent protests against police violence.

For centuries, the police have in fact been the tool of oppression wielded to crush working people

Unfortunately, getting police unions out of the broader labor movement will not be easy. The AFL-CIO immediately rejected the WGAE’s resolution with little discussion. Why? It is not as simple as the fear of losing members – the International Union of Police Associations has 100,000 members, a drop in the bucket of the AFL-CIO’s 12.5 million union members. Rather, the union establishment fears for its own existence.

To understand this, you have to keep in mind the fact that business interests have been waging a very successful campaign to destroy all unions for decades now. Union membership among private sector workers has plummeted to less than 7%; among public sector workers, however, more than 33% are in unions. Government workers are by far the strongest sector of organized labor. And big unions are determined not to allow any sort of attack on public sector union membership – even if those unions are police unions, who are protecting cops who beat and kill the rest of us.

Lee Saunders is the head of AFSCME, the most powerful public sector union in the AFL-CIO, which represents 1.4 million state and local government workers, including some cops. In an op-ed this week, he wrote: “Just as it was wrong when racists went out of their way to exclude black people from unions, it is wrong to deny this freedom to police officers today.” Fine. But we don’t need them inside of our labor movement, poisoning it for everyone else. (There is a related strain of argument that says that if we push police out of the labor movement, we’ll lose the ability to influence them for the better. This is laughably disconnected from reality. How has that worked out for us so far? Perhaps if we wait another hundred years, we’ll see some progress?)

It is sad to see the union establishment ruled more by fear of losing what they have than by a vision for a better future

Union leaders think that the American public is too stupid to understand the difference between regular labor unions and police unions. I disagree. Here is the difference: labor unions empower working people. Police unions disempower working people, by making it impossible to reform and hold accountable police forces that systematically abuse, imprison and terrify working people. Likewise, the motivation of the rightwing assault on unions in general is to disempower working people. The motivation for the current campaign to take police unions out of the labor movement is to empower working people by ensuring that the AFL-CIO is not forced to represent a slice of the workforce that is structurally opposed to its broader mission of freedom and equality for the sort of people most likely to be harassed by the police.

This seems simple enough. It is sad to see the union establishment ruled more by fear of losing what they have than by a vision for a better future. Millions of Americans have taken to the streets to cry out for justice. Not only is it the responsibility of the labor movement to stand next to them – it is the responsibility of the labor movement to be them. Union membership has been declining for decades, as inequality rises. This is not a coincidence. A revival of working-class power is vital to fixing many of the underlying issues that have broken our nation. (For example, unions are the only thing that has ever helped close the wage gap between black and white workers.)



The energy that has flowed into the protests must also flow into the labor movement. In order for that to happen, unions and the AFL-CIO need to welcome everyone in. That can’t happen when the cops are guarding the door. Time to make a choice. People over police.

Americans have had enough …
… and are marching for justice in unprecedented numbers. In small towns and big cities across the country, thousands of people are giving voice to the grief and anger that generations of black Americans have suffered at the hands of the criminal justice system. Young and old, black and white, family and friends have joined together to say: enough.

The unconscionable examples of racism over the last weeks and months come as America’s communities of color have been hit hardest by the coronavirus and catastrophic job losses. This is a perfect storm hitting black Americans. Meanwhile, the political leadership suggests that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The president who promised to end the “American carnage” is in danger of making it worse.



Featured image: ‘For centuries, the police have in fact been the tool of oppression wielded to crush working people.’ , Photograph: Kevin Hagen/AP

(Portside)

https://orinocotribune.com/its-time-to- ... nt-allies/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 18, 2020 2:00 pm

Building Power to Win is the Revolutionary Approach to Bourgeois Electoralism”
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 17 Jun 2020

Image
Building Power to Win is the Revolutionary Approach to Bourgeois Electoralism”

We must make clear that it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream.

“The struggle is for power not reform.”

The following is excerpted from a presentation by Ajamu Baraka to a national webinar Electoral School of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, June 13 and 14.

The Context of Struggle:

The great African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, reminded us that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution.

His reminder was not a call for abstract theorizing, quite the contrary. What he meant was that one cannot advance in practice unless that practice is guided by the most advanced understanding of the material and ideological conditions that revolutionary forces face.

Over the next two days we will ground ourselves in our particular realities as they relate to our strategic and tactical engagement with bourgeois electoral system in the United States.

Let’s begin:

The ongoing and current capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression.

The economic collapse comes on the heels of the deep crisis of the economy that occurred in 2007-8. With the economic instability and the increasing economic competition among capitalist states, divisions have emerged among the nations that those of us in BAP refer to as the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

The U.S. has responded by moving toward a more confrontational posture, not only with its allies in Europe. It has also elevated China and Russia as national security threats.

Domestically, the African working class never recovered from the collapse of 2007-8. The continued restructuring of the U.S. economy to a low-wage economy has resulted in the African working class being relegated to the lower rungs of the labor force joining undocumented migrants, immigrants, and other colonized workers.

“The African working class never recovered from the collapse of 2007-8.”

We are now seeing with the economy the genocidal implications of economic conditions, in which young Black workers have more value as human generators of profit locked up in prisons than as participants in the economy as low-wage workers. This reality is one of the factors driving the obscene phenomenon of Black and Brown mass incarceration in the largest prison system on the planet.

Astronomical youth unemployment, millions of Africans without health care, poisoned environments, and crumbling schools reflect the objective conditions that, with COVID-19, are ravaging the Black communities.

This is the colonial/capitalist system in its neoliberal stage. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic!

The Pandemic pulled the ideological curtain from the system and exposed the brutal realities of a rapacious system of greed, human exploitation and degradation, social insecurity, corruption, and the normalization of coercive state violence.

Bipartisan support for neoliberal capitalist policies over last four decades revealed the devastating impacts of neoliberal policies – the closing of public healthcare facilities, including hospitals as giant for-profit hospital chains consolidated; millions, disproportionately Africans, living precarious lives at the bottom of the labor markets and as gig workers with no benefits, no sick leave, no vacation, no security when ordered to shutter in place by capitalist state because the privatization of healthcare resulted in a healthcare system unable to respond to a national healthcare crisis.

“The Pandemic pulled the ideological curtain from the system.”

Hundreds of Africans are dying unnecessarily from the virus because of conditions of colonial oppression, which amounts to state-sanctioned murder!

So, the murders of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey and the phenomenon of vicious killer cops are just the tip of the iceberg

But because there was no video of grandma, alone and shoveled into a corner of the hospital taking her last breath on a ventilator, along with all of the other thousands of Africans who are unnecessarily dying from COVID-19, it took the video of George Floyd to bring the people out of their houses and into the streets.

This is context for the current Black is Back election school as we approach the next round of bourgeois elections. This context informs the ideological, political, and economic issues of the bourgeois electoral arena, and how we see and approach the electoral system.

The Context Determines the Strategy:

Let me share a few points that I believe must inform how we see and engage the electoral arena in a way that develops and advances our forces.

1. There can be no ideological confusion – we must be clear in language that cannot be co-opted or commodified by the state or its associated institutions like liberal funders. So, we must state in unequivocal language that it is the Western colonial/capitalist imperialist system, now led by the U.S., that is responsible for the billions of human beings living in poverty. It is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, that makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream. It is the rapacious greed and absolute disregard for human life by imperialism that drives the arms trade, turns human incarceration into a profitable enterprise, and transforms millions into migrants and refugees because of war and economic plunder. This parasitic imperialist domination would be impossible without imperialism’s core instrument of enforcement and control – state violence. Beginning with the European invasion of the Americas’ in 1492 to this very moment, previously unimaginable brutality and systematic violence was used to enslave, commit genocide, steal lands, despoil cultures and assault the earth, all in the service of what became the Pan-European colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchal project. When you start from that foundation, not only are you clear but everyone that you engage with will be clear where you stand.

“It is the Western colonial/capitalist imperialist system, now led by the U.S., that is responsible for the billions of human beings living in poverty.”

2. The struggle is for power not reform. We make demands against the state and the system, but it is clear that those demands are in context of a program for winning power. Demands are strategic – participation in electoral system must be seen as an aspect of the process of building dual and contending power. The BIB 19-point program represents a useful roadmap for building and shifting power to the people.

3. The entry point for participating in electoral process must be through organization. Reject candidate centered politics. Engagement with electoral system by progressive forces must be informed by a collective power-building strategy that is part of a broader strategy for building independent popular power. Individualistic, candidate-centered politics lacks accountability and is inherently corruptible.

Issue selection – focus on issues that if won will reflect a significant shift in power to the people. Defund the police – questionable, but if linked to community control of the police, stopping Israeli training of police, cutting the military budget and transferring money to the people; and electoral proportional representation represent demands that can’t be easily co-opted by the state.

“Reject candidate centered politics.”

4. Focus on local races – county commissions, city councils, school board, mayors. The emphasis on the local is connected to what I see as the inevitable disintegration of the U.S. state. As a settler colonial state, the U.S. is, and has always been, a fragile and inauthentic state. That is precisely why a civil war was fought just 70 years after its inception as a constitutional republic in 1791.

We remember the importance of having some degree of local control with the Katrina crisis, where the surrounding white municipalities used their local power to prevent Black people, escaping from the hurricane, to enter their communities. And we watched how regional coalitions were formed during COVID-19 crisis as the Federal Government failed to provide national leadership.

As national and state power become increasingly unable to hold on to a centralized power and there is generalized descent into chaos, having some degree of local control of the state apparatus will be especially important.

In closing.

We are facing some difficult times, but we have faced difficult times before. As we ground ourselves over these next two days during our electoral school, we acknowledge that we are an African people and we are at war! We did not ask for this war – and it has been a one-sided war so far – but we do not intent for that situation to last that long because we do not intend to lose. We understand that we must win this war – for ourselves and for global humanity!

All Power to the People

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Uhuru!

https://www.blackagendareport.com/build ... ectoralism
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 19, 2020 1:39 pm

​​​​​​​Re-Embracing Internationalism and Class Solidarity in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter
Berna Ellorin and Adrian Bonifacio 17 Jun 2020

Image
Re-Embracing Internationalism and Class Solidarity in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter

The struggle against systemic racism and the police state in the US is integral and linked to the struggle against US wars of aggression overseas.

“The time has come for forging a clearer path to liberation analysis that centers on working class solidarity across race and borders.”

“We don’t think you fight fire with fire best ; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism , but we’re going to fight with solidarity . We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism , but we’re going to fight it with socialism .” -- Fred Hampton Jr.

The horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and countless other unnamed and unrecorded murders at the hands of the police have galvanized mass uprisings across the US and around the world under the banner call of Black Lives Matter. In a demonstration of solidarity across communities all around the world, people of color who have confronted

structural racism, disenfranchisement, and state violence have taken to the streets in these Black-led uprisings.

As first, second and even third generation Filipinos in the US, BAYAN USA has been actively participating and marching in solidarity with Black lives and Black self-determination. Our material basis for mobilizing our community for Black solidarity has always been for the simple reason that we share an enemy: US empire (aka US imperialism), and, by extension, its police and military as its tools to carry out fascism. We also share an important aspiration: liberation.

Common History/Common Enemy

We understand that the historic oppression of Black people in the US, beginning with chattel slavery, created the conditions for the US to accrue enough wealth from slave labor to become a global imperialist power. That power would eventually wage aggressive wars for territory overseas, beginning with the invasion and brutal colonization of the Philippines in 1899.

The national liberation struggle that Filipinos and our diaspora overseas have been waging since 1899 strikes at the same beast that the Black liberation struggle has been valiantly fighting against. The Black soldiers sent to the Philippines as part of the US invasion who defected to the side of Filipino revolutionary forces fighting against US occupation came to this realization at the turn of the 20th century. And in the same vein, we know that every step forward of the Black liberation struggle is a victory for the Filipino people and all peoples suffering under US empire.

Hundreds of years later, in 2020, Black people in the US are targeted by the police and criminal justice systems of the fascist and war-profiteering US state. At the same time, the Philippines remains a neocolony of the US and the Filipino people remain impoverished and repressed by a US-puppet fascist Philippine dictatorship. From marching together after the murder of Amadou Diallo in 1999, to the mass uprisings in the wake of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin’s deaths in 2014, we have made it a point to link and raise our struggles and demonstrate our paths to liberation as interconnected, as Chairman Fred Hampton implied. Our struggles are distinct, but advance forward ever in step against US imperialism.

Class Struggle Present Day

The global health pandemic and the unprecedented economic crisis that has ensued—a direct result of the US’ militarist and neoliberal response to COVID19–has laid bare the structural economic assault of the capitalist system on poor people everywhere. The role of police as a tool of the state and white supremacy as a ruling class ideology to protect said capitalist system have been exposed. The mass uprisings calling for justice for George Floyd and growing awareness of the failures of capitalism ring of a higher class consciousness the people of the US sorely need.

Simply put, now is the time to break free from the neoliberal trap of identity politics that silos struggles that are materially and historically interconnected and works in favor of preserving the racist and capitalist status quo because it fails to name and address the root problem we are trying to resolve.

As part of the larger group collectively known as people of color in the US, we are concerned by the ideological influence of neoliberalism on young bright minds today, which surrenders the primacy of class consciousness and class struggle, and by extension proletarian internationalism as the material basis for international solidarity[1] .

Proletarian Internationalism

Historically, Black leadership in the US has drawn on proletarian internationalism and class struggle as peoples weapons for combating systemic racism and white supremacy.

In the final year of his life, Malcolm X spent time in Africa and the Middle East, where he built relationships with leaders of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance movements. Prior to that, Malcolm X spoke of the need for internationalism when he drew inspiration from the Bandung Conference of 1955, uniting Black and Asian leaders in an international alliance that went beyond identifying white supremacy as the common enemy, but named colonialism and monopoly capitalism’s interest to control the natural resources and use their populations as cheap labor from the Global South.

At the same time, many leaders of Third World resistance movements expressed solidarity and connected the struggles of colonized peoples overseas with the oppression of Black people in the US, including Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-Tung and Fidel Castro, to name a few.

While speaking of non-violence in the 1960’s civil rights movement, it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s vocal criticisms against war and impoverishment (as forms of class warfare) that eventually made him a target for assassination by US establishment.

“Third World resistance movements expressed solidarity with the oppression of Black people in the US.”

In 1969 and 1970, the Black Panther Party sent African-American delegations to North Vietnam, North Korea, and China.

As the US continued its military invasion of Vietnam in the 1970’s, the BPP and other Black leaders contributed an important message to the anti-war discourse in the US-- that of drawing material connections between the historic state violence against Black people in the US, including lynchings, to the US wars of aggression for hegemony and geopolitical influence.

In other words, the struggle against systemic racism and the police state in the US is integral and linked to the struggle against US wars of aggression overseas.

Conclusion

And in this period of mass uprising against racist police terror in the US and around the world, the Trump administration simultaneously pursues arms deals with other countries, including the fascist and blood-thirsty Duterte regime in the Philippines, to beef up the trillion-dollar military-industrial complex. In the same breath, it militarizes the police and deploys National Guard to “dominate” protestors in the “battle zones,” all in the time of the biggest economic crisis the American people have ever confronted, with no clear path to economic recovery.

While fighting the imminent passage of Duterte’s Anti-Terrorism Bill in the Philippines, we as Filipinos in the US draw material connections between the US-backed counter-insurgency of Duterte with police brutality and all forms of state violence in the US that target and destroy Black, Brown, immigrant, and all working class lives.

One where youth of all races and creeds embrace the demands of the international working class over so-called intersectionality. One that can actually rock and threaten the status quo by holding ruling classes accountable, and dismantling the economic foundation of white supremacy and the police state. One with a fighting chance of actually freeing us all.

Bernadette Ellorin is the National Spokesperson of BAYAN USA (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan), an anti-imperialist alliance of 30 grassroots Filipino organizations fighting for genuine sovereignty and democracy in the Philippines, as well as the rights and welfare of Filipinos in the U.S. and the diaspora.


Adrian Bonifacio is the National Chairperson of Anakbayan-USA, a grassroots Filipino organization of youth and students with 26 chapters across the country. It is the largest overseas chapter of Anakbayan Philippines, and a member of BAYAN USA.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/re-em ... ivesmatter
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 22, 2020 5:46 pm

Image

Trading One Uniform for Another: Can Police Be “De-Militarized” When So Many Cops Are Military Veterans?
June 21, 2020 orinocotribune Black Lives Matter, defund the police, George Floyd, military, Racism, systemic racism, US decline
Getting police departments to stop acting like an occupying army will require many fundamental changes, including much closer screening of job applicants who are veterans and ending their preferential hiring treatment.

By Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early – Jun 19, 2020

Calls for de-militarization of law enforcement have gained new momentum in the wake of nationwide protests against police brutality. That process won’t be easy in a nation where nearly one fifth of all cops are military veterans — including Derek Chauvin, George Floyd’s killer in Minneapolis and Robert McCabe, one of two officers charged with felony assault for knocking down a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo.



When loaded down with cast-off Pentagon gear, police officers from any background are more likely to regard peaceful protestors as enemy combatants, particularly when the Pentagon’s own top official refers to their protest scenes as “battle space.” But studies show that employing people with experience in war zones abroad has not been a boon to “community policing” either.

Getting police departments to stop acting like an occupying army will require many fundamental changes, including much closer screening of job applicants who are veterans and ending their preferential hiring treatment.

A Popular Career Choice

Policing is currently the third most common occupation for men and women who have served in the military. It is an option widely encouraged by career counsellors and veterans’ organizations like the American Legion. As a result, several hundred thousand veterans are now wearing a badge of some sort. Although veterans comprise just 6 percent of the US population, they represent 19 percent of all law enforcement personnel.

This disproportionate representation is due, in part, to preferential hiring requirements, mandated by state or federal law. In addition, under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice provided local police departments with tens of millions of dollars to fund veterans-only positions.

As noted [EF1] by the Marshall Project, in its 2017 report, “When Warriors Put On the Badge,” this combination of hiring preferences and special funding has made it harder to “build police forces that resemble and understand diverse communities.” The beneficiaries have been disproportionately white, because 60 percent of all enlisted men and women are not people of color.



RELATED CONTENT: UN Human Rights Council Approves Resolution Against Racism One Month Later – Concerns About Loose Use of “Terrorism”

Justice Department officials, particularly under President Trump, have shown little interest in tracking the later job performance of recently hired veterans or how their military background might affect their behavior vis-à-vis the public. As former DOJ official Ronald Davis told Marshall Project researchers” “I reject the notion that a returning veteran, who has seen combat, should cause concern for a police chief. I would even hire more if I could.”

However, a 2009 report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police raised multiple concerns about “the integration of military personnel” into law enforcement after their service in post 9/11 conflicts. According to this study, “veterans returning from the Vietnam War could easily distinguish their combat environment – mostly jungle, farm, or open terrain – from their urban or suburban policing environment. In the case of returning combat veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, their combat environment and their policing environments may appear surprisingly similar.” The report warned that past-deployments “may cause returning officers to mistakenly blur the lines between military combat situations and civilian crime situations, resulting in inappropriate decisions and actions, particularly in the use of less lethal or lethal force.”



Co-sponsored by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Police Chiefs’ report also noted that combat veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and related “depression, anger, withdrawal, and family issues” may have greater propensity for “inappropriate use of force.” Some chiefs felt that veterans under their command came back “ill prepared for the civilian world” because their PTSD left them with “exaggerated survival instincts.” Nearly a third believed that veterans on their force often had “psychological issues” of some sort, 14 percent had received more citizen complaints about officers who were veterans than they did about non-veterans, and 10 percent reported instances of “excessive violence” involving former military personnel.

More Involved in Shootings

Veterans of, course, got high marks for their physical fitness, weapons-handling experience, habituation to discipline, and leadership qualities. Yet the report notes that some had trouble “readjusting to receiving rather than giving orders, trusting others, and changing the rules of engagement.”

A study by researchers at the University of Texas School of Public Health, which focused on the Dallas Police Department, found that officers with military experience used their guns while on duty more than non-veterans. During a ten-year period, nearly a third of all 516 Dallas cops involved in a shooting incident were veterans. Those who had been deployed overseas were nearly three times as likely to have fired their weapon; those who had not been deployed were still twice as likely to be involved in a shooting. The study concluded that some veterans employed by the Dallas police department lacked “critical thinking skills” when confronted with “high stress scenarios.”

RELATED CONTENT: Goodbye, Columbus

Similar findings were reported by the Marshall Project after it studied use-of-force complaints and fatal police shootings in several other cities. In Boston and Miami, officers with military experience generated more civilian complaints of excessive force. Nearly a third of the Albuquerque officers involved in a total of thirty-five fatal shootings between January 2010 and April 2014 were veterans. A lawsuit against one of those officers, who killed an unarmed motorist, revealed that he was an Iraq war veteran, whose PTSD caused flashbacks, nightmares, and black-outs. Nevertheless, as the Marshall Project discovered, he was “assigned to patrol a high-crime area of town known as ‘the war zone.'”

The Marshall Project recommended that police departments have clear and consistent policies to “evaluate employees’ mental and physical fitness …to ensure public safety and guarantee a stable, reliable, and productive workforce.” Yet, it found that actual screening practices are far from standardized or effective. “Some agencies employ the use of administrative interviews and psychological evaluations to assess how veteran officers will perform the essential functions of their position, while other agencies revert to their department medical officer, or lack any policy at all.”

Another Hazardous Occupation

An additional concern is that veterans will be more vulnerable to well-known occupational hazards of police work– like alcohol or drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce, and high rates of suicide. As Blue Health, a mental health advocacy group for police officers and their families, reported in January, far more cops died by their own hand (228) last year than were killed in the line of duty (132).

One of the many veterans that we interviewed for a forthcoming book is a soldier who returned Iraq with severe PTSD but became a deputy sheriff. After his wife threatened to leave him unless he gave up policing, he sought residential treatment twice and was finally forced to choose between his family and his job, which left him angry, irritable, and often volatile. “I don’t like gray areas,” he confessed. “If I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. What that means is I can play cop, or I can play family man.” With vocational rehabilitation help from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), he became a skilled construction worker instead.

Other veterans, well known for their criticism of “forever wars” and the harm they’ve done to ordinary soldiers, are joining the fight against militarization of public safety. Common Defense, the progressive veterans’ group, has launched a “No War On Our Streets” campaign. Among those involved is Kyle Bibby, a former Marine Corps infantry officer, Annapolis graduate, and co-founder of the Black Veterans Project. According to Bibby, who served in Afghanistan, veterans have unique credibility as critics of putting of $7 billion worth of military hardware in the hands of local police departments. “It was our equipment first,” he says. “We understand it better than the police do…It’s important that we have veterans ready to stand up and say: ‘These weapons need to go.'”

Tougher to tackle is the issue of ex-military personnel being over-represented in the ranks of domestic law enforcers. When you leave the service, says Danny Sjursen, a West Point graduate who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, “there’s no de-programming…They just load you up on meds and then you go straight to the police academy.” According to Sjursen, “military-style of policing is based on notion that high-crime areas should be treated like occupied countries.” So the “military-to-police pipeline” increases the chances “that a guy comes back to Baltimore, Camden, or Detroit and functions the same way we did when occupying Kabul or Baghdad.”

Among those also at risk when that happens are fellow veterans; since 2018, at least six African-Americans who served in the military have died in police shootings, including a troubled young Air Force veteran killed in Indianapolis last month.

Retired Army colonel Andrew Bacevich, a distinguished military historian who served in Vietnam, argues that, in the past, it might have made “all the sense in the world for us to vector vets toward the police force.” But that was before the post 9/11 generation of veterans returned home with such high rates of PTSD, substance abuse, and suicide. “To the extent that we’ve got a bunch of damaged young people,” Bacevich says, “then maybe the last thing we want to do is put them in a job where they carry a gun in an environment that’s going to make things worse.”



Suzanne Gordon is the author of several reports and books on veterans’ heath care, including Wounds of War. Steve Early is the author of Refinery Town, a book that chronicles police department reform in Richmond, CA. They are currently working on a book for about veterans’ issues. They can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.

Featured image: Courtesy Military Times

https://orinocotribune.com/trading-one- ... -veterans/

Google Translator

Not so much cause as effect of imperialism this is certainly a factor these days.
They come home and it's just another 'occupation'. This serves the bosses well, I do not see any meaning full police reform, much less abolishment happening whatever the protests as long as capitalism is extant, those cops got a job to do....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 24, 2020 2:07 pm

A Moment or a Movement? The Blowback Will Tell
Wilmer J. Leon III 24 Jun 2020

Image
A Moment or a Movement? The Blowback Will Tell

You cannot separate the racist police aggression in the streets of the US and the racist US aggression against Venezuela, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Libya and Syria.

“Chauvin was sending a message to the community by holding his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck in broad daylight.”

“George Floyd should not be among the deceased. He did not die of common health conditions. He died of a common American criminal justice malfunction.” Rev. Al Sharpton June 4, 2020

I understand Rev. Sharpton’s point, but to cast this lynching in the context of a “malfunction” is to lose site of the much broader historical context in which African’s in America and later African Americans have existed since 1619. I am not inferring that it was Rev. Sharpton’s intent, but to cast this horror in the context of a “malfunction,” is to give America a pass. We can no longer afford to do that.

The total disregard for George Floyd as a human being, coupled with a hatred for the Black Community that Officer Derek Chauvin took an oath to protect and serve, led to the lynching on May 25. Chauvin was sending a message to the community by holding his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck in broad daylight. “Black people, know your place, understand your place and stay in your place.” Even the knowledge that he was being videotaped didn’t deter Chauvin. His inhumanity towards Mr. Floyd as his life was slowly choked out of his handcuffed body emanates from America’s historic inhumanity towards people of color since Tristan de Luna established the short-lived settlement at Pensacola Bay in 1559.

This hatred is woven into the very fabric of America. It is in the founding documents of this country. It’s evident in Supreme Court decisions and the blowback from America’s dominant culture to any modicum of success achieved by African Americans (The Red Summer of 1919 or Tulsa 1921). A clear and indisputable pattern is obvious. Within this historic context, this atrocity captured on video, this act of domestic terrorism was America in action. The power of the State as carried out through Officer Chauvin was in full effect. This was no malfunction…it was business as usual.

“This act of domestic terrorism was America in action.”

Our ancestors were brought to these shores for only one purpose; free labor. Our task was to perform all the requisite dirty work to build an economy and empire for Europe. The so-called “christians” who swore in the Mayflower Compact of 1620 that they undertook, “…for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia…” could not reconcile their inhumane treatment of their African captives with their “Christianity.” To absolve themselves of the dilemma posed by the true Christian ethic that God created man in his own image, the Europeans slowly dehumanized their captives and codified this in law and constitution.

Examine the Laws of Virginia:

Act XII 1662, “children got by Englishmen upon a Negro woman, is the child slave or free?” The status of the child shall be determined by the status of the mother.
Act II 1667 addresses, “What happens to the status of a baptized slave?” Answer: “the conferring of baptism doth not alter the condition of person as to his bondage…”
Act I 1669, a master cannot be charged with murder for the “casual killing of slaves” since no one in their right mind would destroy their own property.
By 1669, the enslaved were no longer persons, they were no longer human; they were property.

The Constitution gave us the Three Fifths Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Provision (the constitutional validation for slave patrols, the early form of American policing) and allowed for the importation of enslaved Africans for twenty years, until January 1, 1808. In 1857 the Supreme Court via Chief Justice Taney gave us the Dred Scott decision, validating the belief that all blacks -- enslaved as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks"had no rights which the white man was bound to respect…”

These are a few examples of what is meant by structural or “institutional racism.” Stripping our ancestors of their humanity, relegating them to the position of property or things and codifying it in the founding documents and court decisions of this country. This is not a malfunction; this is the machine operating as designed!

Yes, there has been legislation and court decisions that have amended and/or eliminated many of these laws from the books. The Brown decision, the 64’ Civil Rights Act, the 65’ Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act were all great legal and legislative advancements. This progress has lulled us to sleep with a false sense of accomplishment and optimism. The reality remains that legislation alone does not do anything to disabuse those in power and those they represent of the controlling mindset of this country, of the notion that African Americans are less than human.

“This is the machine operating as designed.”

For example, banning the chokehold is a great idea, but that same banned chokehold is what killed Eric Garner. Until we get to the real crux of the issue, the controlling and racist mindset of an entire criminal justice system that turns a blind eye to choking, shooting unarmed suspects and not holding officers accountable when they use excessively violent tactics, nothing substantive will change. Jury verdicts validating police abuse and police departments staging sickouts to protest fellow officers being charged with crimes is evidence of the machine making corrections to protect itself.

Are the ongoing protests a moment or a movement? The jury is still out. The verdict will be determined by the blowback that comes from this moment and how those who are protesting and advocating for change respond to it. The response to judicial and legislative advancements is always substantive blowback. The Supreme Court has dismantled the Voting Rights Act and conservative groups have escalated voter suppression tactics such as The Crosscheck Program. The Supreme Court has made it more difficult to prove discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. The election of Donald Trump was blowback to the election of Barak Obama as was Sen. McConnell’s not allowing the nomination of Merrick Garland to go forward.

“The verdict will be determined by the blowback that comes from this moment.”

The American ethos of exceptionalism and the illusion of white supremacy are under attack. The battle is playing out right before our eyes on both the foreign and domestic fronts. You cannot separate the racist aggression being carried out against people of color in the streets of the US by the State (aka the police) and the racist aggression being carried out by the US against Venezuela, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Libya and Syria (just to name a few). Dr. King warned us about the three major evils: “poverty, global racial oppression and militarism”... King told us, “And we must face the hard fact that many Americans would like to have a nation which is a democracy for white Americans but simultaneously a dictatorship over black Americans.”

Too many white Americans are insecure and losing their footing in the shifting sands of the quest for ethnic equality in America. How those of good conscience and morality respond to the violent blowback will determine if and how the country can move from this moment of unrest and uncertainty to a movement of peace and equality. I am certain that we will never get there until Congress and others stop wading in the safety of the shallow waters of chokeholds and panels and begin to swim into the deep waters of the real issue… the racist ethos of America.

Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III is the Producer/ Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Leon,” on SiriusXM Satellite radio channel 126. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email: wjl3us@yahoo.com. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com © 2020 InfoWave Communications, LLC

https://www.blackagendareport.com/momen ... -will-tell
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 28, 2020 11:01 pm

Yes, Defund the Cops – And Put Them Under Community Control
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 25 Jun 2020

Yes, Defund the Cops – And Put Them Under Community Control

Image
Yes, Defund the Cops – And Put Them Under Community Control

Community control of the police means empowering the people to shape and oversee the mechanisms of their own security and end forever the armed occupation of our communities by hostile forces.

‘’Street power’ will be dissipated if organizers leave the levers of power in the hands of local Democrats.”

Never in the modern history of the United States has an insurgent, Black-led movement been viewed favorably by such large majorities of whites. According to the latest New York Times/Siena College Poll, a combined total of 61 percent of whites give “very favorable” (37 percent) or “somewhat favorable” (24 percent) ratings to the “Black Lives Matter movement.” Those numbers match almost exactly the results of a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month that shows a combined 60 percent of whites either “strongly support” (31 percent) or “somewhat support” (30 percent) Black Lives Matter.

In historical contrast, during his lifetime Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. never garnered higher than 45 percent positive ratings in the Gallup Poll . That high point was reached in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act was passed. An equal percentage of the public, amounting to a majority of whites, viewed Dr. King negatively. Ninety-five percent of Blacks had a positive opinion of MLK. By 1966, however, Dr. King’s Gallup negative rating was 63 percent, and a Harris poll showed him at nearly 75 percent disapproval by 1968, the year he was assassinated.

“King’s high point was reached in 1965.”

The same New York Times poll that shows 60 percent of whites feeling positively about the Black Lives Matter movement also confirms that Donald Trump still commands the support of a bare majority of white Americans – which would mean that a small but significant slice of white Trump supporters also view Black Lives Matter positively. I’ll leave it to white social psychologists to interpret those crazy numbers.

Possibly the most useful Times data shows nearly 70 percent of whites under 45 believe “the killing of George Floyd was part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence toward African-Americans rather than an isolated incident,” Eighty-seven percent of Blacks of all ages and 74 percent of Hispanics agree .

The least useful NYT poll data shows that Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump by 14 points. This number tells us nothing about what kind of change is desired by Americans of any race, age or educational level – only that growing numbers would choose Biden over Trump under the two corporate party electoral system. But Biden is a proud architect of the mass Black incarceration regime and rejects virtually all of the demands associated with the “Black Lives Matter movement,” most emphatically including “defunding of the police .” On criminal justice, both Biden and Trump oppose the aspirations of two-thirds of the U.S. public – just as they stand in opposition to the two-thirds of Americans that support Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

“Biden is a proud architect of the mass Black incarceration regime.”

Despite the breathtaking size, intensity and multi-racial character of this month’s protests, and the record-breaking popularity of the insurgent movement, the corporate electoral duopoly – not the loathsome persona of Donald Trump, but the Democrat-Republican tag-team-- remains the greatest impediment to social transformation. They are the institutional enemy. That most emphatically includes the Black political class, virtually all Democrats, who have overseen the steady deterioration of the Black economic condition, managed much of the local workings of the Mass Black Incarceration State, and supported a U.S.war machine that has slaughtered millions of non-whites in the two generations since Dr. King called this country “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, today.”

The bigger the Congressional Black Caucus gets (it now stands at 50 full-voting members in the House), the more servile to party corporate leadership it becomes. By wide margins, the Black Caucus has opposed ending militarization of the police (80 percent “nay,” in 2014); supported elevating the police to a “protected class” and making assault on police a federal “hate” crime (75 percent, in 2018); and voted to further empower the FBI to spy on citizens (two-thirds of the Black Caucus, in 2020). Nearly half the Black members of Congress supported the bombing of Libya and NATO’s invasion of Africa in 2011, and the vast bulk of them have signed off on every escalating war budget put forward by Presidents Obama and Trump. In short, the Black Caucus is a bulwark of systemic racism and U.S. imperial warfare. Not one serving Black congressperson has raised a peep about the ongoing slaughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than six million have died under four U.S. presidents.

“The Black Caucus is a bulwark of systemic racism and U.S. imperial warfare.”

The biggest luminaries of the Black Caucus, including “Auntie” Maxine Waters, of California, South Carolina’s James Clyburn, and New York’s Hakeem Jeffries and Greg Meeks, are today rallying around New York Democratic incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel to beat back progressive Black challenger Jamaal Bowman , a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Black Caucus has slavishly followed every directive of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi since she ordered them to refrain from holding hearings on Katrina, in 2005. They are collaborators in the duopoly’s greatest crimes against Black America, and the world.

The “street power” that has been so dramatically manifested over the past month will be dissipated and ultimately wasted if organizers put forward demands that leave the levers of power in the hands of local Democrats, of whatever color. The demand to defund the police is unassailable, in principle. However, if in practice it devolves to endless and debilitating dickering with local legislatures over funding that will inevitably be cut across the board due to collapsing tax rolls, no lasting transformation will be achieved, and the movement will splinter and fade. That’s why we at BAR support community control of the police – the institutionalization of grassroots people’s power to shape and oversee the mechanisms of their own security and end forever the armed occupation of our communities by hostile forces.

“The demand to defund the police is unassailable, in principle.’

Chicago has the most developed movement in the nation for community control of the police. Spearheaded by the recently re-founded National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, led by Frank Chapman, the Alliance turned a 60,000-strong list of anti-police protesters into a force that has changed the political complexion of the city council, 19 of whose 50 members are now co-sponsors of the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC). But Chicago’s newly elected Black mayor, Lori Lightfoot, opposes community control and defunding the police, ostensibly because defunding would lead to disproportionate lay-offs of minority officers.

Frank Chapman explains that community control of the police empowers the people to create whatever security mechanisms they see fit. It’s not a question of defunding the police versus making them accountable to the people:

“All of the reforms being called for, including abolishing and defunding the police – reforms that directly affect the current existence of the police as outside occupiers of our communities -- are embedded in CPAC,” said Chapman. “CPAC is the way to ensuring these demands are met. CPAC puts the power of reform in the hands of communities through directly elected representatives. That’s community control. With community control, we decide the if, when, and how of policing – up to and including abolition. With community control, we can defund, demilitarize, and regulate the police out of existence. Communities can reimagine a world without police – but not without the power to do so themselves. We’ve heard nothing from our elected leadership about this broad demand to reconceive public safety, except for the 19 alderpersons who support CPAC.”

“We decide the if, when, and how of policing.”

Lori Lightfoot is a guardian of white oligarchic power in Chicago, an exemplar of the melanin-over-substance politics practiced by the Black Misleadership Class – the same craven crowd that, in their formative years, preached that the movement of the Sixties must shift from the “streets” to the “suites.” In urban America, some of the oligarchs’ most dependable servants are Black, and nearly all are Democrats. Their strategy will be to entangle proponents of defunding the police in endless fights over whether dwindling tax dollars will go to police or social programs, while ensuring that the community controls neither. In the process, movements are demobilized and a portion of those activists that remain are “captured” – joining the Democratic clubhouse.

To avoid this path to oblivion, the movement must be clear that victory is measured in Power to the People. Demand community control, not only of the police, but of education, housing, health care and all the other services that civilized societies require. Beat the oligarchs in the streets – and ultimately, take their suites and put them at service to the people.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .

https://www.blackagendareport.com/yes-d ... ty-control
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:08 am

Cops in Washington defy new state police reform law with impunity
Mario CarbonellJune 28, 2020 166 3 minutes read

Image
Said Joquin, Manuel Ellis, Tiffany Eubanks, Shaun Fuhr(Clockwise from top left). Are their cases being properly investigated under the state's new law? Liberation graphic.

Across the nation there has been an outcry against racist police brutality, and in Washington state that cry is no different. The nation has become all too familiar with the haunting last words of so many: Eric Garner, Anton Black, Javier Ambler, Derrick Scott, Byron Williams, George Floyd, and from Tacoma, Washington, Manuel Ellis. People are rising up all over the country because police can kill Black people with impunity. Since the start of 2020, it was supposed to be different in Washington State – there is a law in place to prevent such things from happening, or so people thought.

Spurred on by the wake of police shootings and the Black Lives Matter movement that brought the militarization of the police to the forefront of public consciousness, the passage of I-940 in Washington State was an attempt to reform the police. It would bring an end to a 32-year old legal barrier that prevented criminal charges from being brought against officers who used deadly force. It also called for independent investigations of the police killings, de-escalation training, and the appointment of a liaison to families that had experienced violence from the police, to keep them in the loop every step of the way.

These all sound like good ideas, and Washington voters agreed. However, the case of Manuel Ellis in Tacoma shows law enforcement agencies have ignored the will of the people and are blatantly ignoring the requirements of 1-940.

After Manuel Ellis was killed in early March, the investigation of the Tacoma police officers involved was turned over to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. However, there had also been a sheriff at the scene, meaning it was hardly an independent investigation! The police department withheld the names of the officers involved. Furthemore, a liaison was never assigned to the Ellis family to keep them up to date, there were no community updates, and no civilian representatives were added to serve in an accountability role.

Each step of the way the Pierce County Sheriff’s office sidestepped the provisions set forth in I-940. The public outcry from Manuel Ellis’ family and supporters over these issues caused the Attorney General to review the case. It was uncovered that the Sheriff’s had avoided questions from the family about the progress of the investigation as well as the aforementioned violations: no community oversight, no liaison to keep the family up to date, and the officer’s names were not publicly released. After a concerted campaign by the Ellis family and community supporters, the investigation was taken away from the Sheriff’s office and the District Attorney of Pierce County and taken over by the Washington State Patrol, with Attorney General Bob Ferguson committed to reviewing the results of the WSP investigation.

Unfortunately the Ellis case is neither an outlier nor the only case of cops in Washington attempting to circumvent the letter of the law. Reportedly, the Attorney General of Washington State has said that there are at least 30 incidents that have occurred in Washington State this year and at least 24 violations of 1-940–which only went into effect in January of 2020.

The injustice faced by Manuel Ellis and his family has been joined by that experienced by Said Joquin in Lakewood, Shaun Fuhr in Seattle, and Tiffany Eubanks in Yakima who was handcuffed and restrained before her death, and many others around Washington State.

At the end of April, Seattle Police stated that Shaun Fuhr had abducted his daughter with a weapon, something which the NAACP of Seattle/King County has disputed based on SPD’s own footage which never shows a weapon. The body camera footage does show officers chasing and then fatally shooting Fuhr who was holding his 1-year-old daughter. SPD is internally reviewing the matter, with the King County Sheriff’s Dept. holding its own investigation as well. There was no attempt at deescalation.

Said Joquin was pulled over by Lakewood police at the beginning of May. The police officer called for backup, and while he waited for it to arrive the officer fatally shot Joquin. The investigation of the use of force is being handled by a task force that contains Lakewood Police.

Tiffany Eubanks died 10 hours after the Yakima police placed her under protective custody. Handcuffed in the back of a police vehicle, she reportedly underwent a “medical crisis,” and was unresponsive when she arrived at the hospital. The investigation is being conducted by an interagency Special Investigation Unit, with an internal investigation conducted by Yakima Police.

Police departments all over Washington state have felt free to flout the new law. Who is there to hold them accountable? What consequences will they face for failing to abide by the law? So far the worst that has happened is the investigation has been taken away and given to a different law enforcement agency.

1-940 was passed with the best of intentions by voters hoping for some real change: for independent investigation, for respectful treatment of families, for officers to face justice. Yet the will of the people was ignored. What did it take for officials at the highest levels of the state to sit up, take notice and start to actively enforce the new law at least for Manuel Ellis case? It took a national uprising, a revolt against racism. All over Washington, as in the rest of the U.S., the people are out in the streets, and they aren’t going to stop until there is real change.

https://www.liberationnews.org/cops-in- ... rationnews

All of the talk of de-funding the cops or abolishing the cops is well intentioned and of course we should support any meaningful improvement in worker's lives, which must include removing an occupation army from their neighborhoods. But, like the cop reforms we've seen so far, they will be largely meaningless. Like 'body-cams', they always seem turned off when it might matter most. Because the cops will not, can not, operate as the muscle of class rule without complete impunity. And the owners understand this so any attempts to lessen this impunity will be stymied, diluted to unrecognisable, or actually do the opposite of the people's will. Witness the so-call solutions tendered by either house of Congress. Perhaps this time we will not settle for the promises and pettifoggery, but it will take organization, leadership, ideology.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:04 pm

From rebellion to revolution
Eugene PuryearJune 29, 2020

A profound rebellion against racism has been sweeping the country for a month. Millions have taken to the streets in every part of the country, shaking public opinion. Elite institutions, individuals and corporate brands are scrambling to offer symbolic sacrifices at the altar of racial justice in the hopes they will be spared from the righteous wrath in the streets.

At the same time the police are wantonly attacking protestors and continuing to murder Black people, making a mockery of all the “official” declarations of “anti-racism.”

Hidden in just this fact is the most important lesson: The capitalist system grants concessions only in defense of its own stability. None of the grisly facts of racism was unknown or undocumented prior to the assassination of George Floyd. The only thing that has changed is people are willing to burn down buildings and confront the “shoot-to-maim” riot brigades.

Stability has not been restored. Massive crowds continue to come out into the streets; unions are taking strike action for Black Liberation; and a big cultural moment featured a Black Communist as the hero.

Various attempts to extinguish the flames of resistance–through force or flattery–have had the opposite effect. For the authorities this begs the question of what will get people out of the streets? Those in the streets meanwhile grapple with what it takes to make substantive changes and what would even constitute “real change.”

There are many rebellions, fewer revolutions. Rebellions are usually associated with fighting the good fight, revolutions with winning it. We remember many slave rebellions across the Americas, but only one slave revolution. We celebrate the heroism of Nat Turner and Dessalines equally but recognize that their achievements are of different orders.

Rebellions express the inability of the current system to resolve its own contradictions using the existing political framework. Revolutions resolve those contradictions: a new framework, a new system.

The uprising that erupted after the murder of George Floyd is beset on two sides. On the one hand the forces of “law and order;” on the other an assorted group of “reformers” seeking to placate resistance through cosmetic change. In other words, on both counts, the familiar strategies of counter-insurgency designed to quench any rebellion to the status quo: repression and co-optation.

And they are right to be concerned as this new upsurge in the Black Liberation Movement coincides not only with a pandemic but also a severe economic crisis and the unfolding disasters associated with climate change. The idea of socialism — the extension of social and economic rights — is rising and unsettling the capitalist status quo. The LGBTQ movement and the rise of #MeToo are taking aim at thousands of years of social and cultural conventions.

The oppression of Black America is so central to the country that the struggle for Black Liberation has often acted as a detonator, so to speak, setting off broader social struggles throughout the system. In today’s volatile mix, the charges now rigged to blow may be too difficult for capitalism to withstand.

Those in the streets are learning concretely about their own power. The scale of the response to the uprising — from nearly every corner of the capitalist class — has also revealed that they fear that the struggle of the Black community will grow and expose a distinct source of weakness.

Moving from rebellion to revolution is ultimately figuring out how to operate the “detonator factor” capitalist elites fear so much.

This is the political context with which we now approach the question of “reforming” or “defunding” or “abolishing” the police.

What is policing?
The first really “modern” police department in the United States were the Charleston City Guards formed in the 1730s. They were created out of fear that the more informal methods employed before were not sufficient to prevent slave revolts.

Policing has further roots in the growth of urban centers in the mid-19th century. The expanding capitalist economy was growing through large influxes of immigrants rendering former methods of social control less effective. Notably, the rise of policing in this context was not a response to rising crime; in fact, in some early police bastions, crime appeared to even fall in the decade preceding the formation of police departments. They were about control.

The issue was not the scale or intensity of the “crimes” but who was committing them. Those with the power to mould public opinion identified the new working classes as a particular threat. They saw and portrayed the workers as a mob, prone to licentiousness, who must be controlled for the good (read: stability) of society.

The Boston Council noted, for instance, the need for police based on the “great numbers” arriving in the city without the benefit of “New England training” who can be “held to restraint” only by “fear of the lawgiver.”

In both cases the police were not a reflex response to “crime.” Then–and now–they were the instrument for controlling classes of people deemed “criminal,” prior to any individual action. The essence of deploying the police as a “preventive” force is clearly predicated on determining that “crime” is “natural” to some more than others.

Any system of laws, to be effective, has to establish some universal legitimacy. Having the police known as purely protectors of property and order for the rich would not do. So they grew to include other auxiliary functions and were recast in popular culture and by the political elite as unbiased and heroic “public servants.” Policing became the generally accepted means by which two crucial needs are secured for the populace at large: personal safety and contract enforcement. This perceived legitimacy of the notion of policing gives the police as an institution tremendous cultural authority.

The real story
In reality, crime is at historic lows and what crime is out there isn’t being dealt with terribly effectively by the police. Less than half of (FBI described) “violent” crimes (46 percent) are ever solved, and only 17 percent of “property crimes.”

Despite the perception that the police are out there “fighting a war” as they always put it, being a cop is actually less dangerous than being a farmworker, groundskeeper, septic tank servicer, garbage collector, truck driver, roofer, or flight engineers — just to name a few of the 15 jobs officially more dangerous than being a police officer.

There is no real war with crime. Yet in city after city, militarized police drain 30 to 40 percent of municipal budgets. There is certainly a signal that something else is at play. Take for instance “Stop-and-Frisk,” widely lauded for years as a very effective “crime-fighting mechanism” in every major city in the U.S.. Many millions of people were stopped in New York, but only 0.3 percent resulted in a jail sentence longer than 30 days. Only 0.1 percent led to a conviction for a violent crime. Despite the racial disparities in the number of stops, whites who were stopped were 50 percent more likely to be found with a gun than Blacks.

The police were undoubtedly aware of these dismal results in real-time. So what other explanation can there be other than the issue wasn’t stopping crime but asserting dominance over areas pre-determined to be “criminal?”

From its beginnings until now policing is a system of social control. The police are not focused on “crime” generally but on certain communities and places, and the types of “crimes” that allow them to maximize their presence and overall social control. Wages stolen by employers adds up to more money than all other forms of theft combined. The police do not even investigate wage theft, which is restricted almost solely to civil law and financial penalties. People who steal literally millions of dollars they are legally obligated to pay are routinely treated much better by the legal system than someone who robs a liquor store of $500.

What to do with the police?
With the obvious racist bias and less than stellar public safety effect of policing, it’s no surprise that the movement in the streets is gaining almost universal support for “defunding the police.” Others in the movement are pushing reforms to give communities more tangible democratic control over policing and some call for the police to be abolished.

“Law and order” politics asserts that any reduction in the scope of policing is a recipe for chaos. The real issue, then, which immediately confronts those looking to restrict or get rid of the capitalist police is what will you do about “crime?” “Crime” is the one issue that allegedly has no cure. One person victimizing another is deemed to be a natural human trait, often buttressed by the “pathologies” allegedly stemming from a “culture of poverty.”

In reality, though crimes have roots, like any other social issue. Any program to limit the police must on the other side push for a social transformation to address these roots. It stands to reason that decreasing poverty would also decrease certain property crimes and robbery. Formal and informal “violence interrupters’ have demonstrated in miniature that empowered community members, armed only with moral authority, can make significant reductions in shootings and murders. After thousands of years of subordination of women to men, only a dedicated struggle and empowered society-wide movement against woman’s oppression can eliminate sexual assault. It only appears that “crime” cannot be eliminated because the current system of U.S. capitalism cannot resolve the contradictions of this society — in fact it institutionalizes and perpetuates the conditions, the inequality, the exploitation and abuse that make safety and security precarious.

From this perspective “police abolition” takes a whole other dimension. The police are not an eternal regulator of human behavior, but a product of a certain stage of development of class society, built and expanded amid a particular time and certain conditions. Total social transformation, first to address the conditions that give rise to so many “crimes,” but also empowering the oppressed, will create new economic, social and cultural conditions where the police are not necessary. The end of class society, oppression and exploitation — such a society where just, equal and sustainable relations between people is the norm — is communism.

The issue of abolishing the police isn’t simply an issue of will, or lack of imagination but objective realities. The police did not emerge out of a bad idea — but as a special body of armed men to protect a highly unequal and oppressive ruling class. If we recognize that these are the roots of the police, and that the “crimes” they allegedly respond to also have roots in the social order, then it follows that the only way to eliminate such specially armed instruments of social control is to get at these roots.

With that being said, even in the here and now, with all the existent social problems, oppressed communities are so over-policed and over-incarcerated and policing and incarceration so ineffective it’s clear both could be dramatically curtailed and replaced more effectively right away.

What is really at stake is not the debate over how much policing can or cannot be reformed in the short term. What is essential is the struggle for power, the struggle to define the horizons of where we are headed. Capitalist reformers or communist revolutionaries?

Killer cops and cell blocks
Currently the movement in the streets is facing a debate of strategic importance: whether or not it is consistent to be for the abolition of police and call for the jailing of killer cops. One school of abolitionists answers that question in the negative — arguing that to use the “system” to jail killer cops is to reinforce the ideological existence of the overall policing-incarceration system.

This position is often presented as more “revolutionary” on its surface but in practice it would, if adopted, set the “revolutionaries” against the mass sentiment of Black people who entered into this generalized rebellion out of a desire for justice. The killing of George Floyd and so many others continues the legacy of Jim Crow-style injustice and racist lynchings — most vicious crimes which were never punished. The mass desire to punish the white supremacists and racist cops who have killed Black people for centuries is not wrong!

Crafting slogans is not about which combination of words is the cleanest or free of contradiction from the standpoint of philosophy or “discourse.” This may be the standpoint of some, but throughout history, what drives forward mass revolutionary politics is the gap between what a government says and what it does, the gap between its laws and stated ideals versus its actual practice. These contradictions — not the most revolutionary slogans — are what draws masses of people into rebellion. The fight for the most basic demands can lead people, if these demands are not met, to the most revolutionary conclusions.

Historically it is only a relatively small group of people who are drawn into struggle based on agreement with a worked out formula for what a new society will look like. The art of revolutionary politics — especially in a rebellious moment like this one — is to first and foremost identify that which has brought the masses into motion, to tap into it, to affirm it, and to validate it with fighting slogans that keep the rebellion going. Secondly, it is to introduce concepts and slogans that allow the movement to widen its vision, to make it harder to co-opt by the ruling class, and that further illuminate the path of struggle ahead. But this cannot come at the expense of the first task! To do so would be to reduce the movement to the “true believers” and isolate it from the mass sentiment that is ultimately the driver of history.

In the formal sense it can’t be denied that to make a demand on a system or an established legal process is to legitimate it to some degree. Why that is such an issue, is not clear.

Historically it’s a fact of struggle. The 20,000 slaves who fought on the British side in the “Revolutionary War,” and put on the monarchy’s uniform, explicitly legitimated the British crown but was their struggle against slavery unjust? Likewise for the honorable warriors of Florida’s Negro Fort who terrorized Southern slave holders under the ultimate “authority” of King Ferdinand of Spain. The enslaved and free Black people of Haiti who rose against the planter class did so invoking the documents and principles of France’s bourgeois revolution. In Reconstruction, Black communities across the South utilized whatever laws and federal forces that they could to defend their gains and hold in check the racists intent of beating, intimidating, defrauding and killing them.

Voting is the ultimate legitimation of the system. Should Black people not have fought for the right to vote? Should people not defend voting rights on the basis that voting feeds the bourgeois electoral logic?

When workers fight and strike for a better contract with their employer, they are accepting the underlying exploitative logic of capitalism — that the employer pays less to the workers than what they earn from the sale of their products. When tenants invoke their rights against an abusive landlord, they are ultimately invoking the laws of the capitalist state to show that they are right; and using one or another instrument of that state, the courts and the force of law. But they are not wrong either.

Furthermore, Cuba certainly applies a “carceral logic” towards counter-revolutionaries, but where would Assata Shakur be, or all the gains of the revolution for the working class, without Cuba’s determined struggle against U.S. imperialism and to prevent counter-revolution? If we can accept the working class’s right to self-defense, and can accept the use of violence under certain conditions to prevent oppression and injustice, how could we object to a workers’ state’s use of prisons? The “carceral” logic of prisons is just an institutionalized form of that same violence. In our current context it’s easy enough to recognize the need to abolish the death penalty, but do we put deathrow on the same plane as the Haitian slave soldiers who hung French officers? Each situation has its own context.

The apparent contradictions at the level of discourse are in fact only surface deep. There is no contradiction between, on the one hand, demanding cops face the same judgment for murder as the rest of society, and on the other hand desiring that the capitalist state be smashed and replaced with a workers’ state, and for that matter working towards a society free of class division and the absence of a state altogether.

Take for example the 78 percent of Black people who responded to one poll that they wanted “tougher” charges against Derek Chauvin (murderer of George Floyd). But why would they be considered to have any particular view on the ultimate legitimacy of the police? Many of those, while embracing a carceral logic for Chauvin and other killer cops, would also declare themselves for the total elimination of the current police institutions.

The very idea of a revolutionary process implies that things have to go through stages. One set of demands and one struggle leads to the next.

Moving forward
What is the particular context that gives the struggle against police terror such ability to capture the attention and drive the political agenda of the country? Without a doubt because police terror is the raw edge of the oppression of Black people in the United States. It always has been. It’s an encapsulation of the humiliation and brutality that marks the wide spectrum of indignities perpetuated by racist America. More than any other thing, unchecked racist police brutality has been the number one driver of urban rebellion within the Black communities for over 60 years. If the police were immediately arrested and punished accordingly after each case, there would be no rebellion. It is the Jim Crow legal system, the double standard, that sparks such outrage and militancy. This has to be recognized.

The oppression of Black people as a people, a nation, was the central pillar of early capitalist wealth and Black labor became essentialized as reserved to the lowest wages, classifications marked more frequently by unemployment than other strata of workers.

The oppression of Black people is so central to capital that any rebellion from the Black community questions, even in some of its most basic forms, major shifts in the way society will need to be organized in order to address racism. If just the struggle for Black Liberation can shake the system, this shows that the actual achievement Black Liberation can only mean the total transformation of the capitalist system.

This is clear enough in the streets where specific critiques about policing are voiced interchangeably with general reflections of the brutal impact of racism on Black people. Police terror is just one major aspect of what is clearly a war on Black America.

Deepening the rebellion, and pointing towards revolution means embracing its strategic position. The struggle against police brutality can be elevated to one for liberation. Stopping the war on Black America means stopping the capitalist dynamics undergirding the oppression of Black people. Capitalist dynamics lay at the heart of so many unresolved contradictions that the need for a broad front against the capitalist system becomes clear, at least to movements that want to move from righteous rebellion to victorious revolution.

https://www.liberationnews.org/from-reb ... rationnews

jfc, I do believe PSL is upping it's game.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 04, 2020 9:55 pm

Thousands march for Elijah McClain, massive community blockade of police station ensues in Aurora, Co.
Liberation Staff - DenverJuly 4, 2020 27 3 minutes read

On the evening of July 3, thousands of community members in Aurora, Colorado gathered to demand justice for Elijah McClain and to call on the Aurora Police Department to immediately fire the officers involved in his killing. Protesters also demanded murder charges for the killers.

The action was organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Frontline Party for Revolutionary Action, organizers who have been in the fight for justice for Elijah McClain since he was killed on August 23, 2019 and who led the organized takeover of Interstate Highway 225 by three thousand people the Saturday before.

The killing of Elijah McClain: community fight back

Elijah McClain’s case has recently garnered national and international attention, ten months after his death, as the movement against police murder and racism grows around the country and the world.

McClain was a 23-year old Black massage therapist from Aurora, Colorado who was stopped by police for the “crime” of looking suspicious. He was wearing a ski mask, as he routinely did to stay warm despite his anemia, and was dancing to music as he walked. Aurora police beat him to the ground, put him into a carotid chokehold, held a knee to his back and had paramedics inject him with a massive dose of ketamine to subdue him. He suffered a heart attack and brain damage and died in the hospital hours later. The coroner’s report left the cause of death as “undetermined” and the District Attorney declined to press any charges. To this day his family has been denied any form of restitution from the city because Elijah McCLain had been classified as a “suspect.”

Earlier that day, Aurora Police Department announced that three officers were fired, and one resigned, after a related scandal was leaked to the public. An officer reported that photos were circulating within the department depicting officers at Elijah McClain’s memorial at Billings and Evergreen smiling and jokingly holding one another in the carotid choke hold that had been used to torture McClain. One of the officers who killed McClain, Jason Rosenblatt, had received the photos and replied, “HaHa.” He was fired for this response, but the other two cops involved in Elijah’s killing, Randy Roedema and Nathan Woodyard, remain on the force.

Protestors demand justice, surround police station

Marching from Billings and Evergreen, the site where Elijah McClain was killed by Aurora cops and paramedics on August 23, 2019, march organizers led protesters on a surprise turn to descend upon the nearby APD District 1 building, surrounding the facility and taking Aurora police completely off guard.

For the next eight hours, the massive crowd continued to peacefully occupy the perimeter around the station, declaring that no one would enter or exit the building until APD met the community’s demand to fire the murderous cops who killed Elijah McClain.

In an open letter to Interim Chief Vanessa Wilson, PSL called out the APD’s pattern of tyrannical and unconstitutional use of force. On the previous Saturday, Aurora Police made national headlines when they repressed a peaceful violin vigil for Elijah McClain with tear gas, pepper spray and batons.

Demanding that Wilson immediately fire the killers on her force, the letter pointed out, “If you respond to our peaceful occupation with violence just like you did to the vigil last Saturday, you are choosing to injure protesters and deny their constitutional rights just so you can keep literal murderers on your payroll.”

Throughout the night, the mobilization remained joyful and militant. A spontaneous dance party broke out, in remembrance of Elijah McClain who was dancing to music during his final walk home when a neighbor called the cops on him for looking “suspicious.”

Occupiers shared the event with their networks on social media using the hashtag #ADPoccupation, calling on friends and supporters to join the mobilization and bring supplies like food, water, and blankets.

After several hours, APD Interim Chief Vanessa Wilson reached out and asked to speak directly to the protest organizers. Lillian House of the Party for Socialism and Liberation called Wilson on the phone and amplified their conversation over the loud speaker for the entire crowd to hear.

Unsurprisingly, Interim Chief Wilson made excuses for why she could not fire the officers. To enormous cheers from the crowd, Lillian responded, “We are not buying that. Our demands are not changing. Woodyard and Roedema, tonight. Fire them.”

Hundreds of protesters decided to stick out the occupation through the night.

Finally, Interim Police Chief Wilson and APD made clear how they were going to respond to the community’s simple demand for justice: with overwhelming force.

Hundreds of heavily armed riot police descended on the occupation at about 4 AM and dispersed the crowd. Their response made it clear that the Aurora Police Department would rather descend on a peaceful demonstration with military grade vehicles and weapons than fire killer cops in their department. Before police opened fire, organizers decided to withdraw the crowd, recognizing that allowing the cops to brutalize people would not change the chief’s decision for that night. Some protestors decided to stay and go head to head with the police.

This is only one step in the struggle for justice for Elijah McClain. But the entire world is seeing the brutality of the police in Aurora and around the country, and thousands are in the streets for justice. The landscape is changing in Aurora, where that exceptionally racist and violent police force is now facing huge pushback from the community. The fight back continues!

https://www.liberationnews.org/thousand ... rationnews
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply