Police, prison and abolition

[kidoftheblackhole]

I don’t really understand BLM as a national movement. I know BLM DC takes no bullshit, but I’ve heard lack of central organization makes it city-by-city basis. I’m not sure it’s even overall a socialist project necessarily.

The thing about BLM is -- how many school breakfasts have they served? How are they working inside of prisons? How many evictions and foreclosures have they stopped? And on down the line. I've seen it asserted that BLM has raised one or more billion dollars. If most of that is either being funneled directly or indirectly into Democrat projects, coffers, and candidates, that's a problem. And it seems that is exactly what is happening -- so in a way it is easiest to understand BLM from a national standpoint.

[solidgold]

I don’t really understand BLM as a national movement. I know BLM DC takes no bullshit, but I’ve heard lack of central organization makes it city-by-city basis. I’m not sure it’s even overall a socialist project necessarily.

The thing about BLM is -- how many school breakfasts have they served? How are they working inside of prisons? How many evictions and foreclosures have they stopped? And on down the line. I've seen it asserted that BLM has raised one or more billion dollars. If most of that is either being funneled directly or indirectly into Democrat projects, coffers, and candidates, that's a problem. And it seems that is exactly what is happening -- so in a way it is easiest to understand BLM from a national standpoint.

Yeah, I’ve heard this argument too. I haven’t seen much evidence of anything in either direction, just conjecture.

[kidoftheblackhole]

I don’t really understand BLM as a national movement. I know BLM DC takes no bullshit, but I’ve heard lack of central organization makes it city-by-city basis. I’m not sure it’s even overall a socialist project necessarily.

The thing about BLM is -- how many school breakfasts have they served? How are they working inside of prisons? How many evictions and foreclosures have they stopped? And on down the line. I've seen it asserted that BLM has raised one or more billion dollars. If most of that is either being funneled directly or indirectly into Democrat projects, coffers, and candidates, that's a problem. And it seems that is exactly what is happening -- so in a way it is easiest to understand BLM from a national standpoint.

Yeah, I’ve heard this argument too. I haven’t seen much evidence of anything in either direction, just conjecture.

Conjecture is exactly the problem. There shouldn't be a shroud of secrecy surrounding what is being spent, what is being organized and what the overall plan is generally.

[blindpig]

Power to the People! Policing & Caribbean Autonomy in Nicaragua
October 9, 2020

Wednesday Oct 14, 2020 4:30pm US Pacific / 5:30pm Nicaragua / 7:30pm US Eastern

When the Sandinista People’s Revolution triumphed in 1979, one of the first things the revolutionary government did was disband Somoza’s repressive military and police force and start new institutions to serve the poor majority in the country. Then in 1987, the country’s new constitution established autonomy for the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations of the Caribbean coast region.
Please join us for a 90-minute webinar with three Nicaraguan women who have been involved in building community control of the police and autonomy for ethnic minorities in Nicaragua. Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace will help us draw the lessons from the Nicaraguan experience for our struggles in the US. This event will be in Spanish and English with simultaneous interpretation.

Speakers:
Aleyda Aragón, founder of the Sandinista Police in the 1980s, today she is a practicing elementary school teacher and lawyer who has decades of experience organizing in her barrio to guarantee citizen safety. She can explain the historical and current context and also share personal experience.

Lola Esquivel, member of the Board of the Gloria Quintanilla women’s cooperative in Nicaragua. Lola has decades of experience in community organizing and processes to guarantee community safety, especially for women. She has been part of the volunteer police since age 14, provides support to the head of the Women’s Police Stations (a special division of the police). She represented women peasants in the National Dialogue that took place during the 2018 coup attempt.

Betty Rigby (from Bilwi) will speak about the Nicaraguan Afro-Caribbean experience and autonomy

Ajamu Baraka from Black Agenda for Peace, will wrap up: What lessons can the US movement for Black and Brown lives learn from the Nicaragua experience?

Please help us spread the word! We are still looking for cosponsors to help us publicize the event. If interested, write to clarkgollub@gmail.com.

REGISTER HERE
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/registe ... 8-jSO5e8Iw

https://afgj.org/power-to-the-people-po ... -nicaragua

[blindpig]

Reformism Isn’t Liberation, It’s Counterinsurgency
Dylan Rodríguez 21 Oct 2020


Reformism Isn’t Liberation, It’s Counterinsurgency

You can’t abolish systemic anti-Blackness and racial-colonial violence by protecting the system itself.

“To reform a system is to adjust isolated aspects of its operation in order to protect that system from total collapse, whether by internal or external forces.”

This article is part of Abolition for the People , a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL , a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, which comprises 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems — and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

The logic of ‘reform’

Reform is best understood as a logic rather than an outcome: an approach to institutional change that sustains existing social, economic, political, and/or legal systems, including but not limited to policing, two-party electoral politics, heteronormativity, criminal justice, and corporate destruction of the natural world.

To reform a system is to adjust isolated aspects of its operation in order to protect that system from total collapse, whether by internal or external forces. Such adjustments usually rest on the fundamental assumption that these systems must remain intact — even as they consistently produce asymmetrical misery, suffering, premature death, and violent life conditions for certain people and places.

While modern policing has emerged through the institutionalized violence of anti-Black apartheid and the long genocidal legacies of chattel slavery and frontier warfare, contemporary efforts at “police reform” nonetheless suggest that policing can be magically transformed into a non-anti-Black, non-racial-colonial (“racist”) system. As the story goes, this white magic is to be performed by way of piecemeal changes in police administration, protocols, “officer accountability,” training, and personnel recruitment.

The #8CantWait campaign, widely publicized on social media by the nonprofit organization We the Protestors and its Campaign Zero effort during the early days of the June 2020 global rebellion against anti-Black police violence, exemplifies the foundational fraudulence of this magical ambition. Premised on the untenable, poorly researched , and dangerous notion that adoption of its eight improved “use of force” policies will result in police killing “72% fewer people ,” the 8 Can’t Wait agenda attracted immediate and widespread support from celebrities and elected officials, including Oprah Winfrey, Julián Castro, and Ariana Grande. Such endorsements are inseparable from the political logic of the nonprofit industrial complex : The infrastructure of liberal philanthropy commodifies simplistic narratives of reform into tidy sound/text bites that are easily repeated, retweeted, and reposted by public-facing people and organizations. This dynamic not only insults the intelligence of those engaged in serious, collectively accountable forms of struggle against state violence; it also glorifies clout-seeking laziness as a substitute for actual (abolitionist) activism.

“This white magic is to be performed by way of piecemeal changes in police administration, protocols, ‘officer accountability,’ training, and personnel recruitment.”

One of many glaring problems with #8CantWait — which advocates de-escalation, “warning before shooting,” banning chokeholds, and installation of a “use of force continuum” — is that many of its proposed policy reforms were incorporated by the most homicidally anti-Black police departments in the United States (including the notorious Chicago PD) well prior to the state-sanctioned killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many others. Against all historical evidence, #8CantWait attempts to convince those questioning and rebelling against a violent, misery-making system that policing is reformable — that it can be modified and refurbished to protect and serve the very same places, communities, and bodies it has historically surveilled, patrolled, intimidated, and eviscerated.

As Project NIA director and abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba wrote in a June New York Times editorial , “There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against Black people.” A recent amicus brief in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review echoes Black radical feminist and abolitionist analyses like those of Kaba, Rachel Herzing , Alisa Bierria , Sarah Haley , Beth Richie , and Ruthie Gilmore by considering how #8CantWait amounts to a liberal reaction to and attempted appropriation of an emerging global mass movement that radically confronts the foundational gendered anti-Black logics of modern policing. The brief suggests that “Campaign Zero’s decision to move forward with a middle-of-the-road proposal, just as abolitionist organizers have begun to garner increased public support in their demands to defund and abolish the police, is questionable.”

“There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against Black people.”

It is vital to ask why such reform campaigns consistently emerge with special intensity in historical moments of widespread anti-systemicuprising. The 2020 global rebellions against anti-Black policing, acceleration of abolitionist and proto-abolitionist organizing, and spread of Black feminist and queer radicalisms in our midst are, as the late Cedric Robinson might say, a brilliant, messy, beautiful totality that seeks to overthrow conditions of terror. These conditions are both deeply historical and acutely present, encompassing the deadly forces of criminalization, housing and food insecurity, incarceration, targeted environmental toxification, sexual violence, and cultural demonization. Yet, reform movements tend to simultaneously obscure and reproduce normalized conditions of terror by deferring and/or repressing militant collective confrontation with the historical foundations of gendered anti-Black and racial-colonial state violence. Put another way, if the foundation of such violence is policing itself rather than isolated acts of “police brutality,” or criminal justice rather than the scandal of “mass incarceration,” then reform is merely another way of telling the targets of such asymmetrical domestic warfare that they must continue to tolerate the intolerable.

What might it mean, in moments of widespread rebellion against normalized conditions of terror, to conceptualize reform campaigns like #8CantWait as a liberal-progressive counterinsurgency ? How do such reformist counterinsurgencies serve to undermine, discredit, or otherwise disrupt oppressed, freedom-seeking (Black, Indigenous, incarcerated, colonized) peoples’ growing struggles for abolitionist, anti-colonial, decolonizing, and/or revolutionary transformations of existing social, political, and economic systems?

‘Reformism’

Reformism — the ideological and political position that fixates on reform as the primary if not exclusive engine of social change/justice — is another name for this soft form of counterinsurgency. Reformism defers, avoids, and even criminalizes peoples’ efforts to catalyze fundamental change to an existing order, often through dogmatic and simplistic mandates of “nonviolence,” incrementalism, and compliance.

Moreover, reformism sees the law as the only legitimate form of protest, collective cultural/political expression, and/or direct intervention on systemically violent conditions. (It is worth noting that the interpretation of violent vs. nonviolent acts requires discussion and debate, particularly in response to oxymoronic notions of “property violence” that rarely account for gendered anti-Black and racial-colonial state violence.) Reformism limits the horizon of political possibility to what is seen as achievable within the limits of existing institutional structures (electoral politics, racial capitalism, heteronormativity, the nation-state, etc.).

The reformist counterinsurgency pivots on a fervent belief that the spirit of progress, national improvement, and patriotic belief will prevail over a fundamentally violent order. In practice, this belief approximates a kind of pseudo-religion.

“Reformism limits the horizon of political possibility to what is seen as achievable within the limits of existing institutional structures.”

While abolitionist, revolutionary, and radical forms of collective analysis and movement frequently create irreconcilable confrontation with oppressive institutions and systems, reformism seeks to preserve social, political, and economic orders by modifying isolated aspects of their operation. A peculiar assertion animates contemporary forms of this liberal-progressive counterinsurgency: that the long historical, systemic, institutionally reproduced asymmetries of violence produced by existing systems are the unfortunate consequences of fixable “inequities,” “disparities,” “(unconscious or implicit) biases,” corruptions, and/or inefficiencies. In this sense, reformism presumes that equality/equity/parity are achievable — and desirable — within existing systems.

The reformist counterinsurgency pivots on a fervent belief that the spirit of progress, national improvement, and patriotic belief will prevail over a fundamentally violent order. In practice, this belief approximates a form of dogmatic liberal faith — a kind of pseudo-religion. Thus, increased “diversity” in personnel and bureaucratic infrastructure, shifts in the legal and policy apparatus, and individualized “anti-bias trainings ” ascend as some of the principal methods for alleviating state violence. There is yet another layer of fatal assumption that structures the reformist position: that those targeted for misery, displacement, and premature death under the existing social order must tolerate continued suffering while waiting for the reformist “fix” to take hold.

Abolition

An abolitionist analysis and collective praxis, on the other hand, offers an urgent rebuttal to the bad-faith incrementalism of the reformist position. Two parts of the spreading abolitionist response are worth emphasizing: First, that the internal logic of the existing social, political, and economic order (following Sylvia Wynter , let us call this “Civilization ”) amounts to a long historical war on specific peoples and places. Second, that the transformation of such an order not only requires its upheaval, but also must be guided by the liberation, collective health, and self-determination of African-descended peoples, Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples, and other peoples and places targeted by the long history of Civilizational war . Considering the anti-Black , genocidal, and proto-genocidal logic of racial capitalism, the (U.S.) nation-state, white supremacy, and settler-colonial domination, reformism is not merely inadequate to the task of abolishing anti-Black, racial-colonial warfare; it is central to Civilization’s expansion, sophistication, and deadliness.

To be fair, some rare reform campaigns seek immediate institutional adjustments that directly address the asymmetrical casualties of anti-Blackness and racial-colonial violence. Abolitionist approaches to reform , for example, endorse short-term measures that defend the existence of vulnerable and oppressed people while allowing organizers, teachers, scholars, and other activists to build greater capacity to completely overturn and transform existing systemic arrangements. #8toAbolition , the abolitionist response to #8CantWait, exemplifies such a program of immediate local reforms, which include defunding/redistributing police budgets, decriminalizing survival-focused economies and communities, decarceration of jails and prisons, and universal access to safe housing. Yet, the campaign nonetheless asserts that “the end goal of these reforms is not to create better, friendlier, or more community-oriented police or prisons. Instead, we hope to build toward a society without police or prisons, where communities are equipped to provide for their safety and wellbeing.” Reform is, at best, a stopgap emergency tactic that abolitionists undertake with principled suspicion.

“The end goal of these reforms is not to create better, friendlier, or more community-oriented police or prisons.”

This historical moment is marked by multiple obliterations of the reformist script: Growing numbers of people, communities, and organizations are unapologetically, militantly rejecting the contemporary sociopolitical and economic order. This is a time animated by widespread Black and Indigenous revolt, audacious visions of a future against/after Civilization, and a disciplined mass refusal to surrender to the intimidation of right-wing reactionaries and the open repression of the state. Proliferating grassroots activity, language, thought, and collective learning expose the brittle ideological claims of reformism, which wilt in the face of the surging art, movement, and poetry of abolition, revolution, reparation, and radical community that define periods like the summer of 2020. Readers of this and other contributions to Abolition for the People may already be engaged with such communities, but if they are not, they can likely search and find ways to link with such collectives with minimal effort. (Otherwise, they can feel free to reach out to me at dylanrodriguez73@gmail.com , and I’ll do my best to facilitate a connection.)

Finally, at a time when the United States is reacting to this insurgent, self-liberating swell of humanity by openly moving toward a 21st-century version of white nationalist fascism, it is helpful to revisit the words of Black revolutionary writer, teacher, and organizer George Jackson, from his book Blood in My Eye :

We will never have a complete definition of fascism, because it is in constant motion, showing a new face to fit any particular set of problems that arise to threaten the predominance of the traditionalist, capitalist ruling class. But if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define it in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be “reform.”

Fatal and terrorizing state violence is not containable to isolated incidents. It draws from and actively expands a long Civilizational history that is based on the evisceration and negation of Black life; the occupation and destruction of Indigenous peoples and places; the criminalization of queer, trans, and disabled people; the flourishing damage of state-sanctioned sexual violence; and the stubborn omnipresence of violent misogyny—which are the everyday order of things under the conditions of normalized (domestic) war.

Reform is at best a form of casualty management, while reformism is counterinsurgency against those who dare to envision, enact, and experiment with abolitionist forms of community, collective power, and futurity. Abolition, in this sense, is the righteous nemesis of reformism, as well as the militant, principled, historically grounded response to liberal counterinsurgency.

Abolition is not an outcome. Rather, it is an everyday practice, a method of teaching, creating, thinking, and an insurgent (“fugitive ”) community-building project that exposes the pitfalls of the reformist adventure. It demystifies reformism’s cheap magic and summons an embrace of the dynamic Black radical and revolutionary tradition that informs collective labors of freedom , structures notions of justice and collective self-defense, and induces a political and ethical obligation to fight unapologetically, in whatever ways are available, effective, and historically accountable. Anything less is a concession to the logics of anti-Black and racial-colonial genocide.

Dylan Rodriguez is a 2020 Freedom Scholar, President of the American Studies Association (2020-2021), and Professor at University of California, Riverside.

This article is from the Kaepernick "Abolition for the People" collection of essays at Medium.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/refor ... insurgency

[blindpig]

Forced Sterilizations Echo History of U.S. Genocide
October 20, 2020



The violations against the people at Georgia’s detention center reveal the inherently abusive structure of prisons, and fuel the ongoing fight for abolition.

by Maya Hernandez, National Co-Coordinator at the Alliance for Global Justice.

Recently, Project South published a report to call attention to the concerning violations taking place inside Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC). The report details the multiple forced sterilizations conducted by Dr. Mahendra Amin, called the Center’s ‘uterus collector’ by Dawn Wooten, a nurse at ICDC and the primary whistleblower of the violations. In addition, the report reveals the overwhelming medical neglect that permeates the facility; pointing to the significant lack of medical care and the lack of adequate protection against COVID-19. The accusations echo a long history of forced sterilizations in the United States, while also calling our attention to the inherent brutal conditions of a carceral system that cages people and consequently swipes their right to equal and accessible care.

The dark history of forced sterilizations in the United States goes hand in hand with sustained government efforts to stifle the growth of populations deemed ‘undesirable.’ In 1927, the Supreme Court decided to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered unfit to procreate. This came as a result of the growing influence of the eugenics movement that began in the early 20th century. Eugenic practices in the United States functioned under the premise that minority groups, such as people of color and the mentally ill, had inherent hereditary traits associated with criminality, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviance, and so more likely to reproduce dangerous and uncivilized communities. Eugenicists looked to a future that shaped American genes through sterilization. At the same time, the financial incentives to lower welfare costs across the board motivated the United States government to approve the sterilizations of minority groups.

Throughout the 20th century, approximately 70,000 people were forcibly sterilized. Numerous cases exposed how healthcare workers threatened to withhold welfare benefits or medical care unless patients agreed to permanent sterilization. Patients were often unaware that the operation was irreversible and/or were compelled to sign consent forms in English that they could not understand. In fact, it wasn’t until the Nazis embraced and applied American eugenics that public opinion shifted in the United States. And yet, the dehumanizing attacks on the reproductive autonomy of marginalized people has continued without failure. The effects are unforgivable.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, one-third of the female population in Puerto Rico were sterilized. In fact, sterilizations became so common in Puerto Rico that they were often casually referred to as ‘la operacion’ (the operation). La Operación, a documentary produced in 1982, sheds light on the dark history of family planning in Puerto Rico and its role in harming the island’s economic and political growth. A program founded in North Carolina in 1933 similarly had detrimental effects on the Black communities in the area. This program was designed to generate economic growth by reducing welfare. It was responsible for the permanent sterilizations of 7,600 people in North Carolina, 5,000 of them were black women. In 1965, the Indian Health Service, a branch off of the United States Public Health Service, created a program for family planning. Through this program, they were able to successfully sterilize 70,000 Native women by the start of the 1970s, an estimated 25% of the Native population. Controlling the population growth of Native communities meant dwindling their political power, and ultimately, their assertion, in numbers, over their land. These examples demonstrate the United States’ nation-wide pursuit to rob poor people of color of their reproductive autonomies using false or misleading pretenses. The pseudoscientific justifications explained away the economic motivations to limit government spending on welfare in all three examples.

The anti-immigrant rhetoric that permeates society today has roots in the same historical efforts to eliminate ‘undesirables’ from the United States. Constant is the fear-mongering among conservative Americans that immigrants will give birth in the United States, gain citizenship through their children, and drain the welfare system. The pseudoscientific validation used in the 20th century by the United States government to dispose of and control immigrants is another avenue for explaining the anti-immigrant rhetoric we see perpetuated today. The violations we are seeing at ICDC are direct examples of the aggressive efforts to rhetorically and scientifically excuse the discrimination against and/or the removal of immigrant communities from the United States. Though it is no surprise that these methods of control have reached detention centers like ICDC, it is important to grapple with the particular way that violations against incarcerated people are excused and validated so that we can better eradicate the perpetuation of those methods today.

The ideology used for controlling people in the carceral system today, be they detention centers or prisons, is similar to that of slavery. Slaves, much like incarcerated people, were made to be regarded as “subhuman” so that they could be treated as property. When slavery was abolished, and the 13th amendment was created, the law stipulated that slavery was eradicated “except as a punishment for a crime.” This indicates how our current carceral system was founded on white southern buisnessmen’s efforts to keep slavery going. Asserting control over marginalized people under the premise that they are “undesirable” or “subhuman” constructs and legitimizes a system of exploitation and abuse. The dehumanizing practices that take place in prisons happen because the prison has constructed the “undesirable” criminal, using the rhetorical and historical power of the term to justify all actions against the incarcerated person. The restricting of people’s access to abortion and adequate pregnancy care in prison, the shackling of people in childbirth, and the forced hysterectomies are all examples of how this ideology transpires.

In 2014, a report by the California State Auditor revealed that roughly 150 people were illegally subjected to sterilization in California prisons between 2005 and 2013. The findings divulged that nurses and doctors falsified consent forms and pressured or rushed patients into agreeing to the procedure. Then-Senator Hannah Beth Jackson stated: “the problem [with prisons] is far more systemic… the prison environment is an environment where consent simply cannot be obtained in a responsible, reliable manner for these procedures.” By recognizing that the problem is systemic, Senator Jackson argues a very important point; the prison system itself is inherently abusive.

The United States’ punitive carceral system, which encompasses detention centers and prisons alike, has caused irreparable harm. The development of the prison industrial complex, a term used to show the growing partnership between the government and vested private interest, has exploited and abused millions of people. We will continue to see the far-reaching impacts of caging people for decades to come. The call for abolition has significantly increased in recent years as a result of education and public attention on the atrocities that take place in carceral settings. Prison abolition is a political vision that calls for the eradication of caging and policing people, encouraging new and profound alternatives to current crime and punishment models. As is evidenced above, the current carceral system is incapable of changing because its roots lie with slavery, dehumanization, and abuse. A paradigm shift in support of restorative justice is sorely needed. Examples include fair and just reparations for all of the people who were forcibly sterilized by the United States government as part of a genocidal model of control from the start of the 20th century until now.

There is hope for us yet. Many organizations across the country are making great strides to bring attention to the abolition of detention centers, using grassroots methods that draw on the power of the people rather than appealing to the State. The #CommunitiesNotCages and #FreeThemAll campaigns call for the liberation of people from cages and the eradication of the prison industrial complex. Revealing the United States’ historical efforts to quell the reproductive freedom of ‘undesirable’ communities so as to further their dehumanizing and racist agenda is just a step on the way to defunding all systems of oppression against all people.

https://afgj.org/forced-sterilizations- ... s-genocide

[blindpig]

2020: RACISM, REPRESSION AND FIGHTBACK IN THE USA

For three months now, an uprising
against police brutality and the U.S.
criminal justice system that followed the
murder of George Floyd has persevered in
spite of violent repression spearheaded by
both the state and the extreme right-
wing.

In order to understand the full scope of
the repression of the uprising, it’s
important to be aware of the various
forms in which it has manifested itself.
This report focuses on five key areas of
deepened political repression since the
eruption of social unrest:
- A new wave of politically-motivated
mass detentions and arrests.

- A new wave of political prisoners
criminalized for their acts of resistance.
- An increase in forced disappearances
and targeting of activists under
heightened state surveillance.
- Deaths caused by the use of lethal force
by law enforcement agents.
- Deaths by the ignition of racist violence
and right-wing terrorism.
This report serves three main purposes: to
expose human rights violations, to shed
light on the greater backdrop of
sustained and systematic efforts by the
state to undermine the movement for
Black liberation, and to mobilize support
for today’s victims of political repression,
their communities, and the resistance
movement in its entirety.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEW WAVE OF
POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED
MASS DETENTIONS AND
ARRESTS 06


REPRESSION IN CONTEXT:
PORTLAND WAS NOT THE
FIRST TIME 05

FINANCING THE
REPRESSION: ROLE OF
TODAY’S SOCIOECONOMIC
ELITE 04

INCREASE IN FORCED
DISAPPEARANCES AND
TARGETING OF ACTIVISTS
UNDER HEIGHTENED STATE
SURVEILLANCE 09

DEATHS CAUSED BY USE OF
LETHAL FORCE 11

DEATHS CAUSED BY RACIST
VIOLENCE AND RIGHT-WING
TERRORISM 13

CONCLUSIONS 17

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AyWTIM ... vKo0o/view

[blindpig]

ANTI-RACISM, CULTURAL SOLIDARITY AND STRUGGLE, DEMOCRACY, MILITARISM, PEACE, ANTI-WAR, AND LIBERATION, POLITICAL PRISONERS, PRISON IMPERIALISM, SOLIDARITY WITH NORTH AMERICAN LIBERATION
Racism, repression, and fightback in the USA: November 2020 report highlights
November 6, 2020
Now more than ever, we need to debunk the myth that human rights are an issue in other countries, but not here in the U.S.

A re-surged movement against police brutality, white supremacy, and state violence — come to be known as the largest sustained mobilization in modern history in the United States — continues to reignite public discourse around issues of systemic racism and the need to organize collectively across race lines for transformative change.

It follows that this new wave of resistance has been met with violent and ruthless political repression: the militarization of police forces, a rise in mass arrests and indefinite detentions, hyper-criminalization of the right to protest, bolstered state surveillance of activist activities, and a spike in extrajudicial executions with the support of emboldened right-wing paramilitaries and reignited white supremacist terrorism.

In order to seek justice, we can’t hide from the truth. As human rights monitors and an organization that seeks to equip activists with the infrastructure they need to build a stronger and more unified grassroots movement, we’ve developed an informational report summarizing research findings and documenting human rights violations related to this most recent wave of political repression. Our most recent findings are summarized below.

Read our full report here
http://bit.ly/repressionreport2020

Militarized police forces continue mass arrests of protesters and Black people
Since late May, there have been at least 55 federal and National Guard deployments across the country, working alongside mobilized forces affiliated with the Operations Legend — a sustained and systematic law enforcement initiative in which federal law enforcement agencies cooperate with local and state law enforcement officials, first launched in Kansas City on July 8.



It’s followed that protest sites such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Houston, Louisville, Santa Monica, Portland, Kenosha, and Minneapolis continue to see spikes in protest-related mass arrests and indefinite detentions. The last time there was a comparable spike in arrests and arbitrary detentions was during the Ferguson uprising that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014; however, those numbers still don’t measure up to today’s, which by now exceeds 10,000 protesters across the country.

While there is no comprehensive breakdown of arrest demographics nationwide, analyses of city and county arrest records and polls from think tanks such as the Pew Research Center further reinforce the racial bias evident in U.S. policing and mass incarceration. Even though 46% of protesters surveyed by Pew Research Center earlier this summer are white, there is a consistently high representation of Black people who have been arrested and indefinitely detained for protest-related activities in various cities.

Federal agents are still roaming our streets
Since early June, undercover police and federal agents lacking legible insignia to indicate who they are or whom they work for have been consistently identified at protests throughout the country. What began as the presence of anonymous police officers driving around in unmarked vehicles and forcefully detaining protesters without prior justification (sometimes releasing them with no record of arrest) was taken to another level in July.

Since the issuing of Executive Order 13933, the launching of Operations Legend and the unilateral deployment of federal troops in cities such as Portland, Seattle, and Kenosha that began in mid-July, the Trump Administration has given the Department of Homeland Security — most notably the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) branch’s elite force, the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), the green light to enter major cities to repress protests.

BORTAC agents have been spotted at protests across the country, most recently in Kenosha following the eruption of protests triggered by the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Videos have emerged showing police working alongside federal law enforcement agents to detain protesters and force them into unmarked vehicles on August 26, during a protest that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake. According to activists, at least 12 protesters were arrested this way.

Endless police brutality and paramilitary violence against people of color and protesters
According to The Guardian, there has not been a single week without an incidence of police brutality against civilians or journalists during protests since late May. As mobilizations around racism and police brutality persist in the wake of widely documented police violence against people of color and protesters, so too has the mobilization of armed right-wing counter-protesters.

Five months into the social unrest that erupted in late May, research has revealed some important findings. There have been nearly 1,000 documented instances of police brutality against civilians and journalists during anti-racist protests, according to data collected by Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture, and analyzed by The Guardian in late October. Legal observers have consistently reported accounts of police attacking people with batons and bicycles, running protesters down with horses and police vehicles, and freely deploying tear gas, pepper spray, rubber and bean bag bullets, and flash-bang grenades. According to our research, there have been at least 22 extrajudicial executions of protesters and/or civilians of color killed during their interactions with on-duty law enforcement agents since late May.

All against the backdrop of a growing far-right nationalist movement, a rise in hate crimes, and the mobilization of neofascist paramilitary groups — “Back the Blue” rallies, counter-demonstrations and right-wing terrorist attacks have produced a number of protest-related extrajudicial killings carried out by non-state agents. According to our research, there have been at least 17 extrajudicial killings of protesters and/or people of color carried out by civilians and paramilitary forces.

To make matters worse, documented evidence shows a trend of tolerance for collaboration with the far-right from law enforcement agents. According to research from the Bellingcat Forensic Architecture analyzed by the Guardian in late October, there have been at least 19 incidents of police being permissive to far-right individuals and showing double-standards when confronted with white supremacists. This comes as no surprise, considering there has been a rise in self-proclaimed white supremacist group members infiltrating U.S. police forces throughout the country in recent years.

It’s become very clear that white supremacists are doing the work of the state. Just recently, following the right-wing terrorist attack resulting in the death of two protesters in Kenosha in August, Pres. Trump defended the perpetrator, Kenosha Guard Militia member Kyle Rittenhouse, claiming that protesters had been “violently attacking him.” When asked to disavow white supremacists during a presidential debate, Pres. Trump addressed one of his supporting neo-fascist organizations, the Proud Boys, with the words, “stand back, but stand by.”

Hyper-criminalization of protests has brought a new wave of political prisoners
Since the Ferguson uprising and the wave of protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, the institutionalization of new legal restrictions on protests has enabled a new trend of criminalization of protest-related actions and even harsher persecution of protesters by the justice system. Now, arbitrary and often fabricated charges against protesters are being used to further enhance cases, lead to higher bail amounts and, ultimately, lead to longer potential prison sentences.

Over 300 people across 29 states have been charged with federal crimes related to protests, many of whom face long-term sentences ranging from six months to a lifetime in prison. The issuing of Executive Order 13933, which encourages prosecutions “to the fullest extent” against anyone who vandalizes public monuments, has further fueled the justice system’s vicious persecution of protesters. In multiple states, protesters involved in attempts to damage local or state property are facing “terrorism” charges.

Based on our own statistics derived from our Political Prisoners in the U.S.A. informational page, there has been at least a 12% increase (at least nine new individuals) in the number of political prisoners in the U.S. since the start of widespread demonstrations in late May. We document their names in the report.

The fight continues in the streets!
First and foremost, we demand jurisdictions to drop all charges against protesters and decriminalize the universal human right to assembly. We demand a repeal of Executive Order 13933 and the withdrawal of federal troops from our streets.

But it doesn’t end there. The historical violence people of color have faced and its extension to the movement against racism and state violence are symptoms of a broken system and won’t stop without a collective and sustained effort to defund police forces and prisons and reinvest capital in favor of safe and equitable alternatives. We need to focus on addressing the real dangers to society: widespread poverty and disenfranchisement, a complete lack of police accountability, and the traumatic impacts of the carceral system.

Election anxiety is high, and rightfully so. Regardless of the outcomes of Tuesday’s presidential election, the struggle continues in the streets. The future is ours, and the people are fighting back.

https://afgj.org/racism-repression-and- ... highlights

[blindpig]

Indianapolis: Protesters take action as system lets another killer cop off the hook
Nigel Lisbon
November 15, 2020 59 3 minutes read

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On Nov. 10, special prosecutor Rosemary Khoury announced that the grand jury she led to investigate the killing of Dreasjon Reed did not bring charges against killer cop Dejoure Mercer. Reed’s death was captured on his own Facebook Live stream as well as on security cameras from a nearby business and a library branch. It was part of a killing spree by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, whose officers killed Reed and two others — McHale Rose and Ashlynn Lisby — within eight hours in early May.

Within hours of the announcement, Indy10 Black Lives Matter quickly mobilized. More than 100 people gathered north of the heart of downtown, and took to the streets, occupying several intersections. At one point, after security teams spotted a police Long Range Acoustic Device sound weapon, medical teams handed out earplugs to those who needed protection. IMPD never directly engaged the marchers, even though officers had clearly occupied the city for several days in an attempt to prevent and suppress a rebellion.

Businesses downtown had already boarded up in fear of unrest after the election. Neighboring businesses also boarded up after the police gave them advance notice of the grand jury announcement.

The next night, another 100 protesters took to the streets and marched to the headquarters of IMPD’s Northwest District, where Mercer was assigned when he killed Reed. On the front steps of the precinct, Party for Socialism and Liberation Indianapolis member Chris Dilworth spoke out on the importance of the multinational composition of the crowd that had gathered. “The state tries to divide us so we go against each other. When we come together like this, we can’t be stopped, right? If you study history, anything that’s happened in this country, all policy that’s life-affirming, has been because people fought for it.”

Another march on Nov. 14 repeated the route to the Northwest District. That route took marchers onto 38th Street, a major east-west arterial road through Indianapolis that forms the backbone of some of the most oppressed neighborhoods in the city. The people driving along that road were overwhelmingly supportive of the march, even as it briefly interrupted the normal traffic flow.

Consistent eyewitness testimony: “He did not shoot back”

Earlier on Nov. 14, attorneys for Reed’s family gave a press conference in which they excoriated the presentation given by the Indiana State Police Nov. 10 that, in coordination with the grand jury announcement, gave the veneer of “transparency” from the police who shared the supposed “facts” in the case.

Attorney Fatima Johnson said, “In this case, we know there were at least 10 eyewitnesses, most of whom testified before the grand jury. Their testimony was consistent: Dreasjon was tased, he fell, he was shot while shaking on the ground. He did not shoot back.” State police did not mention the content of eyewitness testimony in their presentation.

Johnson, drawing a comparison to the recent grand jury decision in Louisville that allowed the cops to go free who killed Breonna Taylor as she slept in her bed, asked, “How much more disfavored would Dreasjon be, after he dared to run? After he dared to fall after having electricity pumped through his body? After he dared to move after he was shot? Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Dejoure Mercer did not stop shooting until Dreasjon stopped moving.”

Swaray Conteh, another attorney for the family, said: “We have looked at the evidence. We are surprised that they even had the audacity to present that evidence to the public. That evidence actually supports the proposition that Officer Mercer should have been indicted.” On Nov. 10, state police refused to identify who shot first, saying that they would have to speculate to do so. Conteh pushed back, saying, “What [the police] told the public is that, after the sixth or the seventh shot, there was crossfire. That means, by the sixth or seventh shot, Dreasjon would have shot at Officer Mercer. That’s a plain indication of who shot first.”

Not one of the eyewitnesses testified that they saw Dreasjon shoot at all. Even if he had, he would have been justified in defending himself.

The struggle continues

A chant went up every time the people were in the streets this week: “Indict, convict, send that killer cop to jail! The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” The people knew that the criminal justice system is rotten to the core, and were not placated by an “independent prosecutor” leading the grand jury, when the prosecution’s job is to defend the police.

At the Nov. 14 demonstration, Party for Socialism and Liberation member Timi Aderinwale addressed the crowd, connecting the war on Black America to the war on the poor and working class. Aderinwale spoke about an upcoming demonstration planned by PSL Indianapolis and Indy10 BLM Nov. 18 to protest City-County Councillor Michael-Paul Hart’s Proposal 291, which would criminalize handing out aid to people in need in the city. The protest will demand not only the defeat of Prop. 291, but to Defund the IMPD, including the recent $7 million the City-County Council added to the IMPD’s already bloated police budget. Protesters will demand that money be used instead to fund people’s needs and not killer cops.

https://www.liberationnews.org/indianap ... rationnews

[blindpig]

COVID explodes inside prisons, but only guards to get first doses of vaccine
Sameena RahmanNovember 24, 2020 104 2 minutes read
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Over the past week, 14,697 new cases of Coronavirus infection were reported inside of state and federal prisons — the highest level since the pandemic began. People incarcerated in Michigan and Wisconsin prisons in particular suffered exceptionally high numbers of new infections. As the number of new COVID cases increases, inevitably so too will deaths.

As if the squalid conditions inside of prisons weren’t evidence enough that authorities have no regard for the lives of incarcerated people, the Associated Press obtained a document from the federal Bureau of Prisons saying that the first shipments of vaccines that become available “will be reserved for staff.” According to this report, it is official government policy that prisoners are to be left to suffer and die so that their captors can go to work safe and secure.

Prison system unable and unwilling to deal with pandemic

The United States currently has the largest incarcerated population in the world with a total of 2.3 million imprisoned, and the most people incarcerated per capita in the world. This has led to massive overcrowding and shortages of resources for inmates, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. In total, 197,659 cases nationwide have been detected among prisoners by Nov. 17. The number of positive cases, however, are assumed to be higher than reported. Inmates have a higher risk of mortality than the general population as 38-42 percent have chronic health problems, which was discovered to contribute to the severity of COVID-19 infection.

Furthermore, about 40 percent of prisons are located in rural communities with a population of less than 50,000. While the government tries to build support among these communities for the prison system by demagogically arguing that it is a major job creator, penitentiaries have functioned as super-spreaders of the virus in rural towns, which have far less healthcare infrastructure in place than metropolitan areas. An outbreak in such communities can completely overwhelm their ability to provide care. The prisons’ high infection rates also pose a risk for inmates’ families and communities.

Prisons lack medical equipment and supplies to adequately treat infected individuals or contain the spread of a highly infectious virus. Additionally, CDC protocols are also not tailored to fit overcrowded prison conditions where inmates generally share living, eating, recreational and showering spaces and cannot adhere to social distancing. While segregation can reduce the risk of spread, it comes with emotional and psychological stresses that may worsen the condition.

Adding to this precarious situation is the ongoing exploitation of prison labor. The prison population serves as a reserve of workers that are made to perform often dangerous tasks with pay as little as a few dollars per day, and this practice has continued during this pandemic. For example, incarcerated women at the California Institution for Women sewed masks using fabrics from a nearby men’s prison with a COVID-19 outbreak. They were also not allowed to use any of the protective gear they manufactured to protect themselves. Similarly, inmates at Rikers Island were offered $6 per day to dig mass graves, and more recently, El Paso County jail inmates were being paid $2 per day to transport dead bodies into temporary morgues.

Prisoners and other activists fighting mass incarceration have called for early releases to reduce overcrowding and stop the uncontrolled spread of the virus. A New Jersey bill allows for early release of prisoners with less than a year remaining of their sentences, and has led to the decarceration of more than 2000 people. But in other areas, Prison Policy Initiative found after analyzing 451 country jails that jail populations are higher now compared to before the pandemic.

This pandemic further exposes the true nature of the prison system as a tool not for rehabilitation, but for social control of poor and oppressed people, especially communities suffering under the boot of white supremacy. The struggle continues to win sanitary conditions in prisons, early releases to relieve overcrowding, and ultimately to smash the system of mass incarceration itself that gives rise to catastrophes like the pandemic raging behind prison walls.

https://www.liberationnews.org/covid-ex ... rationnews