Police, prison and abolition

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:22 am

Trump’s photo op backfires in Washington, DC as protests grow more determined
By Sunil FreemanJun 08, 2020

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Trump’s photo op backfires in Washington, DC as protests grow more determined
Washington DC, June 6. Liberation photo.

Across the country protests against racist police violence have only grown stronger in the face of brutal efforts to crush the uprising. A clear turning point was seen in Washington, D.C. as as protesters’ determination escalated sharply after June 1 when Donald Trump decided to violently remove peaceful demonstrators so he could pose with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church near the White House.

Trump’s decision to make a public show of strength appeared to be in response to humiliating accounts of his retreat to the underground bunker, with accompanying images of the White House lights going dark, as protests grew outside on the previous Friday. Whatever the reason, his attempted show of domination misfired badly. If anything, Trump and his team created a textbook example of how NOT to attempt to dominate a situation when people rise up against racist police violence.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had announced a city-wide 7 p.m. curfew for the evening of June 1. The protesters, peacefully gathered at the church, were not in violation of the curfew when police and the National Guard launched a coordinated attack.

Nicole Roussell, a member of Party for Socialism and Liberation at the scene, who was clearly identified with press credentials, described what occurred: “I was there. I witnessed and experienced what actually happened. It was a stunning and sudden unleashing of violence from heavily armed law enforcement agencies, some of which were on horseback against peaceful protesters and the media. There was a barrage of rubber bullets, stinger grenades, tear gas, mace, and flash bang grenades. People were trampled. Many were chanting, “We are peaceful, peaceful protest” during the violence. There was no order to disperse from law enforcement, and after law enforcement drove this crowd from H Street by the White House, the President and his entourage including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General strode across Lafayette Park, walked up to St. John’s Church, held up a Bible, had a photo op, turned around and returned right back to the White House.”

The Trump entourage’s display of dominance had the opposite effect. Roussell continues: “Trump’s entire performance has, if anything, strengthened the resolve of the people and it’s drawn even larger layers of the population into the movement. . . . Two nights after the events on Monday [June 1] on H Street at St. John’s church, the marches grew to their largest number any time since the killing of George Floyd. More than 10,000 people surrounded the White House, marched to the U.S. Capitol, the Trump Hotel, and through the city. And it wasn’t just D.C. It was everywhere.”

Trump’s foolish photo op may have signaled his strength to the right wing Christian base, but it also brought swift condemnation from others. Mariann Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, expressed outrage, telling the Washington Post she “was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.”

Trump’s visit to a Catholic shrine the next day brought another rebuke from Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, who said it was “reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.”

Fractures in the ruling class also became visible as high ranking military leaders expressed opposition to Trump’s call to deploy the national guard against civilian protesters.

While the ruling class squabbled, police around the country attempted in vain to crush the uprising, unleashing waves of violence against protesters. The nation’s capital was no exception. Police surrounded dozens of protestors on Swann Street, leaving no exit in an aggressive kettling maneuver that went viral on social media. A homeowner on the street opened his door for dozens of trapped protesters who were being beaten and tear gassed. The infuriated police fired tear gas into the house as approximately 70 or 80 people fled inside for safety. Those who managed to escape into the house spent the entire night inside, fearing violent police reprisal. Accounts of what amounted to a police riot spread widely on social media and in the corporate news.

As police around the country violently repressed crowds of people peacefully protesting police violence, the video evidence of widespread police violence became undeniably self-evident. Corporate media narratives about a few “bad apple” cops began to crumble, just as the narrative about “outside agitators” had fallen apart when protests spread around the country.

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June 5 protest, Washington DC. Liberation photo.

There have been so many protests in and around Washington, D.C. over the last several days that it’s difficult to even list them all. One particularly significant demonstration organized by the Stop Police Terror Project DC drew a large crowd in spite of heavy rain on June 5.

The group posted: “Our demands remain clear and we’ll continue to fight for a DC that is free of racist militarized policing as we working to #DivestFromMPD and ensure that Black liberation is at the forefront of our fight. When Black lives are under attack, we stand up and fight back.” Several organizations joined in support of the demonstration, including Coalition of Concerned Mothers, The Black Swan Academy, BYP 100, Black Lives Matter DC, Party for Socialism and Liberation – DC, and the ANSWER Coalition-Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

At the protest, people chanted “No Justice, No Peace! No Racist Police!” before Sean Blackmon spoke: “We’re so happy you came out today despite the inclement weather. But you know it’s good that we do this. The cops kill us in any weather. They kill us in the blazing sun. They kill us in the pouring rain. They kill us.in the driven snow. And so if the weather don’t stop racist police terror, then the weather shouldn’t stop resistance to that racist police terror.”

Blackmon noted that that Breonna Taylor would have been celebrating her 27th birthday on that day if police had not killed her. People around the world have made clear that while the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis may have launched the growing wave of protests, it was not an isolated incident of police murder.

Explaining the name of Stop Police Terror Project DC, Blackmon spoke of deep systemic violence: “The reason why we use “terror” instead of “brutality” is because we feel that if a cop shoots you, that’s an isolated act. If a cop beats you, that’s an isolated act. Even if you have a group of cops that beat a bunch of demonstrators, that’s an isolated act. But when you connect those acts to the fact that the material conditions of Black folk in DC are such that they find themselves without the necessities of life, without the access to those necessities, food, clothes, shelter, healthcare, education, gainful employment, living wages and so on, and how we see that the system of capitalism is at the root of both of these problems.”

The racist murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor triggered the growing uprising, but they are not the only cause. The political establishment’s obvious contempt for poor and working class people devastated by the Covid19 pandemic and the resulting fallout has added fuel to the fire. Billions of dollars go to billionaires while millions of people struggle to stay afloat without a paycheck or are forced to work in spite of the pandemic. People were fed up before the mass revulsion that followed when they viewed the video from Minneapolis.

The political establishment and corporate media have lost control of the narrative in the wake of such a powerful and growing protest. Much of the police violence is occurring in cities with Democratic mayors who offer progressive-sounding statements while facilitating the repression. Black Lives Matter DC responded quickly when Mayor Muriel Bowser had a Black Lives Matter mural painted onto the street near the White House: “Mayor Muriel Bowser must be held accountable for the lip service she pays in making such a statement while she continues to intentionally underfund and cut services and programs that meet the basic survival needs of Black people in DC.” Protesters also responded by painting “DEFUND THE POLICE” in bright yellow letters on 16tth Street two blocks from the White House.

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Washington DC, June 6. Liberation photo.

Saturday, June 6, saw the biggest crowds, with an estimated 25 protests across the city drawing about 150,000 people speaking out in the largest protest against police violence in Washington D.C. history. As the PSL-DC contingent marched, Sean Blackmon spoke of international solidarity: “We’re here from Party for Socialism and Liberation and the struggle against racist police in the United States is directly connected to the struggle against the apartheid genocide system against the Palestinian people.”

The politicians and corporate media will try to co-opt protests, but the uprising is growing and shows no sign of stopping as people raise their voices and take to the streets.

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

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:26 am

SIGN THE PETITION
Demand that MAYOR DE BLASIO: RELEASE ALL PROTESTERS
FROM JAIL NOW!

NYPD's Continuing Racist Brutality is a Death Sentence for Protesters

Jails and migrant detention centers, along with nursing homes and meatpacking plants, rank as the worst settings for the spread of coronavirus. The NYPD has not only been arresting thousands of anti-racist protesters and illegally violating the new arrest-and-release law; it is also keeping arrestees for longer than 24 hours AND taking their masks away.

A New York judge just rubber-stamped that threat to public health, ruling it was okay to keep protesters in jail after they’ve been beaten and brutalized.

According to Section 150.20 of New York City's criminal procedure law, the NYPD should not even be arresting ONE person. The movement against the city's racist stop-and-frisk program won the concession and small legal gain that protesters and people stopped by the police should be issued a summons at the scene, with a date to attend court.

The police continue to violate this procedure.

The New York Police Department's budget for 2019 was $6 billion. It is the largest and most expensive police force in the U.S. The NYPD budget is larger than the gross national product of many countries. This is money stolen from vulnerable communities, the same communities that are most impacted by police violence and structural racism. It is seventh largest army in the world and it is in flagrant violation of New York City's own laws.

Any form of arrest, one of the main vectorsin the pandemic of racism, should be off-limits to the NYPD. The oppressive response to the protests by the white-supremacist system of incarceration has amply demonstrated it has no authority to criminalize protest in any way.

The Prisoners Solidarity Committee of Workers World Party demands that all protesters, along with all other inmates in the city’s racist incarceration system, be immediately and unconditionally released.

Racist killer cops walk free. The Wall Street gamblers that destroyed people’s homes never see a day in jail. Trump separates migrant families at the border and puts thousands in camps. At meatpacking plants and other factories executives can reap profits while demanding that migrant workers show up at work, setting off hundreds of infections.

None of these criminals spend a second in jail—while the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. U.S. jails overflow with Black and Brown prisoners, their lives destroyed by what Michelle Alexander has called "the New Jim Crow."

This day-in and day-out reality is just one part of the racist oppression bred by capitalism. Along with skyrocketing unemployment and the devastating effects of COVID-19, mass incarceration has fueled the powerful protests, ignited by the horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

In response to these justified protests, liberal mayor Bill de Blasio has unleashed a bloody cop riot on the streets of New York, targeting not just protesters but also anyone who happens to be in the way, including “essential” workers.

The NYPD has:
- beaten protesters,
- entrapped them with fake information, cabs and kettling,
- violently attacked and jailed pregnant people,
- trapped demonstrators in order to make mass arrests,
- denied inhalers to asthmatic detainees,

Teargas victims are jailed begging for water. Many of those released show signs of being beat. Facemasks are confiscated, while precinct cops themselves refuse to wear them.

New York City, the center of world capitalism and home to world-looting Wall Street, is also the epicenter of the COVID-19 virus. As Governor Cuomo reopens New York to safeguard profits for the rich, the NYPD’s racist brutality can be a death sentence for thousands of righteous protesters. This can lead to a second wave of contagion.

The inspiring, dynamic protests against white supremacy are showing what’s possible when the people are united. The massive New York City protests have broken the ability of the police to enforce the curfew, which was canceled this weekend.

Police unions are not unions to protect workers. They are crime syndicates, criminal cabals. Their racist power structure must be rooted out.

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced this week that upwards of $150 million will be cut from the Los Angeles Police Department budget and given to communities of color. This amount is about 8% of the LAPD’s outsized $1.8-billion budget.

Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council on Sunday announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department following the police killing of George Floyd. "We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe," Council President Lisa Bender told CNN. With nine votes the city council would have a veto-proof supermajority of the council's 13 members, Bender said.

All these concessions show that it’s the right time for the movement to up the ante — and make even bolder demands. Abolish the police!

What we are fighting for:
Dismantle the Racist Incarceration System, All Jails and the New Jim Crow!
Defund the Police and Use the Money for Jobs, Housing, Schools and Healthcare!
Abolish the Police! Close all Detention Centers! Set All Prisoners Free!
Shut Down Capitalism and Build Socialism.
SIGN THE PETITION

https://solidaritycenter.ourpowerbase.n ... 17&reset=1
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:01 pm

Our ungovernable movement needs a program
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON JUNE 6, 2020 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT )

We have marched, we have sat-down, we have occupied freeways. And yet the wave of murders of black people by the police continues. It has unleashed a rage. From Bronx New York to Havre Montana, from Oakland and Los Angeles California to Bentonville, Arkansas and Petal, Mississippi, people are marching in protest.

It is not just this tsunami of murders capped by the George Floyd murder. It is also the lack of any real economic future for the youth. It is capitalism’s wanton environmental destruction. It is Covid 19. And, capping it all, it is the filth, lies and racism spewing out of Trump’s mouth.

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We need a clear program and strategy. Here are some ideas along those lines:

Many in Black Lives Matter call for defunding the police. Right! The police cannot ever serve us – not for working class people nor for any oppressed group. Instead, we need funding for elected community safety committees. These committees should be elected by the residents and the workers in the community. Meanwhile, there are some reforms that we can demand. That includes that the records of all cops should be made public and that any cop who is accused of misconduct and/or engages in any act of violence and hadn’t turned on his or her body-cam is automatically considered to be guilty and should be fired immediately.
Extend the $600/week supplemental unemployment indefinitely and for it to cover all those who aren’t working.
For a $25/hour minimum wage.
No evictions for non-payment of rent.
No cuts in any social programs in any city, county or state budgets. Make the uber-rich (Jeff Bezos: $114 billion; Bill Gates: $106 billion, etc.) pay.
For socialized medicine. Hospitals and the health care system should be run like the fire department. Publicly run, and no insurance needed.
Stop environmental destruction and chaos. Wild habitat destruction and factory farming that have created the conditions for the Covid-19 pandemic and will create even more deadly ones in the future unless it is stopped. These combine with global climate change to make life on this planet uncertain at best.
Internationalism: From Ireland to Nigeria, thousands have protested the George Floyd murder around the world. Our issues are international and so is our struggle. Build direct links between workers and youth internationally to carry our struggle forward.
How can these be won?
For a start, this movement can organize daily street meetings to discuss the issues and plan strategy and tactics.

It should turn to the working class. Go to the construction workers, the hotel workers and public sector workers wherever we are protesting. Appeal to them to join our protests.

We should also turn to union members and to all workers and encourage them to organize to organize unions and to get their unions to join the movement. For too long the unions have been missing in action both on the job and in the streets. A renewed, fighting union movement would transform America.

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The leaders
The corporate media tries to appoint the movement’s leaders for it by who they interview. Preachers, ex-presidents, all sorts of academics and politicians. The liberal Democrats will also try to lead us. No! The leaders will come from the movement itself. From those who are out in the streets showing their courage and ideas.

The future
Just like all movements, this one will go through its ups and downs. The earliest struggles of the workers movement started out as local strikes but workers concluded that it had to be coordinated at the national level. That is what can happen now – for a democratically elected national body to coordinate this movement, advance it and help it draw the lessons and for elected councils at all levels.

Such a national coordinating body can become the fighting committee of the working class – a new, fighting, working class political party! One that stands against both the Republicans and the Democrats. All Democrats.

Our enemy – the capitalist class – is in crisis. They cannot even control their own president. They have no idea where to turn or what to do. They are divided. Now is the time to press our advantage home! Forward to a workers struggle against oppression, for working class unity, and for socialism!

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/06/06 ... a-program/

*************

Oaklandsocialist leaflet for a program
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON JUNE 7, 2020 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT )
This leaflet is based on the previous article on the need for a program. If you like it, please use it!(Note:pdf at bottom.)

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https://oaklandsocialist.files.wordpres ... rogram.pdf
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:46 pm

Unmasking the monopoly of violence, reaffirming an anti-imperialist perspective for black liberation

We present in translation this excellent article by Devyn Springer which deals with the theme of the monopoly of violence, the relationship between racism and internal repression on the one hand and imperialism / anti-imperialism on the other, in the US context. This is a particularly illuminating 2017 paper today given the riots taking place in the USA following the murder of George Floyd by the police.

"I think anyone who is sincerely fighting against racism must fight against imperialism and vice versa" - Assata Shakur [1]

It is deleterious for the purposes of black liberation that we understand the concepts of violence, as well as that of terrorism, exclusively in the way they are proposed to us through an epistemic monopoly. There is a double standard and a white supremacist monopoly on this concept, and although this is not surprising, it is deeply disturbing. Who defines what forms of "violence" are acceptable, who can perpetuate them, and ultimately, who is responsible for unapproved violence? As black people in the West, a people robbed of their freedom on a colonized land, the fact of taking our own definition, normalization and understanding of violence from our oppressors, disguised as civilizers and humanitarianists, should be a disturbing reminder of this monopoly. Within that analysis of the violence,

In order to further grasp this monopoly of violence, especially in the context of black liberation, it is necessary to possess an operational definition of hegemonic power. In short, the United States can be defined as a world hegemonic power; this means that the US, everywhere, dominates in virtually every political, economic, social and cultural context. Such an all-encompassing, and sometimes granite, dominion is perpetuated through violence, but rarely identified as such. Through various coercive mechanisms of state violence, direct and indirect, the US maintains hierarchical power over other countries, and are therefore responsible for the ever deeper disparities between the Three Worlds [2] .

As we unmask the hegemonic power of the United States, we realize how it is maintained not only through mere violent exploitation, but also through the perpetuation of an effectively constructed Western-centric epistemology. Within this epistemology or social perception of truth, the concept of "violence" is built, already at a young age, to be something that is done to the USA and never perpetrated by the USA. The United States does not self-portray as aggressors under any circumstances, presenting subjects such as slavery, colonialism and changes in foreign regimes under a lens of benevolence instead of the actual violence they represent. The ways in which the US creates narratives about, for example, their history of enslavement of Africans,[3] . Another example of such narrative fabrication concerns the legacy of the Black Panther Party , popularly designated as an "anti-white terrorist group" and compared to the Ku Klux Klan, despite all factual evidence demonstrating how far this is from its real legacy. [4] . It is therefore the creation [5] of a specific epistemology, which projects a sense of benevolence and absence of responsibility on the heritage of the United States.

Both internal and international affairs, which involve a perceived aggression against the United States, should be examined and understood within the context of this monopoly of violence, because it allows us to better examine our own positioning in foreign affairs. The fact that images and videos of Syrians attacked with chemical weapons allegedly by the Syrian government, a claim that has been proven wrong and lacks evidence [6], would have "rocked" President Trump into taking action against the Syrian state is a laughable example of such a monopoly in order to generate propaganda. If alleged images of people subjected to abuse by state subjects have the power to persuade the US president to act, because the countless frames of black and indigenous protesters affected, in the United States, by pepper spray, by tear gas, seized by the police, beaten by agents of the latter or by private militias, attacked with dogs, targeted with water cannons at sub-zero temperatures, rubber bullets and with sound cannons [7] do not provoke wide actions by the government US? In short, this violence is labeled "acceptable".

The socially and politically dominant powers divide violence into acceptable and unacceptable. A somewhat simple dichotomy; acceptable violence can be classified as anything that favors the white supremacist empire. Acceptable violence, which can also be defined as "justifiable violence", consists precisely of those mechanisms that are rarely designated as violence, but are instead perceived as necessary and / or inevitable. The notion of "protecting an empire" is inherent in the same form of US existence, and therefore is not seen as real violence besides being rarely questioned. Reason why Obama's legacy, or the use of drones in mainly non-white countries, and that during his presidency reached record numbers causing thousands of deaths, was barely contested, as prescribed as "necessary evil" for the advancement of our empire[8] .

If, therefore, acceptable violence is that which gives impetus to the empire, unacceptable is instead that which endangers or demolishes it. What falls into the latter category is usually labeled as violence, as well as demonized for the purpose of promoting the dichotomy between its different manifestations. An example can be found in the words of the late pan-Africanist scholar and militant Walter Rodney, who discussed, in his classic volume "Groundings With My Brothers", the outrage of "violence" aimed at restoring humanity and double standards in social perception of violence. Rodney claims:“We are told that violence itself is evil, and that whatever the cause, it is morally unjustified. On the basis of what moral criterion can the violence exercised by the slave, to break his chains, be considered on a par with that of a slave owner? "

In this statement there is an important logic applicable to multiple situations and conflicts in the discourse of history. Why is the violent reaction of marginalized groups demonized and identified as "violence", while the cause of its initial explosion is not defined as such? Why are Palestinians systematically referred to as "violent" individuals, given that their violence exists, more often than not, as self-defense against the colonial entity that inflicts on them a daily structural violence close to the definition of genocide [9]? Why are black Americans labeled "violent" following protests, riots and uprisings that destroy property, whereas the system that dehumanizes us, also placing us under the protection of private property, is not considered as such?

This monopoly of violence not only affects how and who suffers it, but also on the ways in which images of it, such as those from Syria for example, are distributed. Images mainly of government bombing victims that the US attempted to overthrow. However, what is not shown are the atrocities committed by the side that has the support of the United States and its allies. During media coverage of Syria, when al-Qaeda members in Syria were on the verge of defeat in east Aleppo, we heard ad nauseamreports about "the siege of Aleppo", and that the population in the east pocket of the city was on the verge of being raked and massacred by the government. Although this fear has been engulfed by many, there is no evidence that such an event has taken place. On the other hand, no word was spoken in the mainstream media about two Shi'ite villages in Idlib province, under siege for years of al Qaeda-aligned rebels, with a population subjected to tremendous suffering following devastating attacks, the all under the nose of the USA and its allies [10] .

The monopoly on the images and the ways in which we are asked to consume them is common to many places and circumstances around the world. How come we are not inundated with images of the US-Saudi embargo / bombing of Yemen, which in addition to killing tens of thousands of people, has led the country to the brink of famine [11] ? Where are the horrifying images of post-Gaddafi Libya, where black Africans are summarily executed on the streets and sold in slave markets [12]? Images that have not been disseminated, as anything that suggests that the United States contributes to the suffering of humans, on an unimaginable scale, has the potential to interfere with their perceived reputation as global guardians and civilizing authorities and could compromise their monopoly of violence.

In Dr. Eqbal Ahmad's short book, "Terrorism: Theirs and Ours" , he compares the concepts of "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" with the actions of US foreign policy, examining the roots of political violence as well as its narrative /propaganda. In his analysis he states that "yesterday's terrorist is today's hero, yesterday's hero becomes today's terrorist". But what is necessary in order to create a mass movement made up of people committed to identifying today's hero as the villain of the past as of the present? In other words, at what point will we see the United States as the villain behind the hero's mask, the villain he has always been?

In the white supremacist capitalist system, which currently thrives using the trope of the "terrorist Muslim" to justify violent exploitation, the analysis of the concept of "terrorism" proposed by Dr. Ahmad becomes extremely important and useful in recognizing how trivial it actually is. question [13] . He identifies five types of terrorism: state terrorism, religious terrorism, mafia / crime, pathological terrorism and political / opposition terror [14]. Among these five types, says Dr. Ahmad, "attention is focused only on one, the least important in terms of loss of life and personal property: the political terror exercised by those who want to be heard." If the only terrorism on which the dominant media focuses and the debate is the political terror of revenge, or the opposing terror in response to the oppression, then the hegemonic subject is well positioned to be absolved from the responsibility of terrorism. Strengthening the epistemological bulwark on the concepts of violence and terrorism as much as possible, the United States is seen as incapable of committing acts attributable to these two categories. But when almost 90% of drone attacks in places like Somalia and Yemen don't hit their target[15] , injuring and killing civilians, what is the line beyond which we interpret this as an act of terrorism?

The monopoly of violence also plays a central role in the construction of the American historical narrative. We saw it in the way the US shapes the discourse around the foundation of the nation, particularly in relation to the history of the degradation of black and indigenous bodies. A discourse of discovery, and when indigenous peoples are mentioned, the relationship with the colonizers is one of mutual cooperation instead of the genocide that actually occurred. Even today, school children are taught to celebrate figures such as Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant as pillars of the continuity of this "great nation", despite historical accounts linking both to careers studded with mass killings of indigenous peoples.

Looking back on the American Civil War, we hardly see a subject like Abraham Lincoln thinking of him as a war criminal for sending General Sherman on the so-called march to the sea [16]. We hardly hear Lincoln convicted of human rights violations in reference to the division under Sherman's orders, when it was busy burning crops with the intent to starve and put entire cities under siege. We hardly think of the destruction caused by Lincoln in relation to the enslaved Africans affected by his actions, to whom he is credited as a "liberator", while in reality his military decisions have had devastating effects on them. The destruction done in suppressing the reactionary rebellion of the Confederates was considered a necessary evil in order to preserve the interests of the industrial capitalists of the north. To date, no human rights NGO has tried to demolish the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, nor did anyone take on the task of deconstructing the glorified colonial violence surrounding his legacy. The context is important, which is why there is always a strenuous effort by the winners, in our case the profiteers of the empire, aimed at controlling the narrative and therefore the context itself.

The pathology of a violent imperialism is, in its essence, sociopathy. Being the oppressor exempts you from thinking about the human cost of your adventures - doesn't require that you think about the consequences - and why should it, when you can simply repackage in yet another, potentially lucrative, opportunity? The expansion of ISIS through Syria, Iraq, the Sinai Peninsula and, more recently, Afghanistan, has been a gift for the US arms industry, in the same way that institutionalized black criminalization has been for the complex prison-industrial. Armaments manufacturers, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, made huge profits during the escalationin the drone war under Obama, and Afghanistan has become a testing ground for new weapons, especially the so-called MOAB bomb, developed by the Alabama-based Dynetics company [17] , used on April 13, 2017. At the time the news appeared, most of the media showed that only ISIS was hit by the bomb, fully disavowing that approximately 95,000 people live at the detonation site. Imperialism and foreign aggression, like much internal violence against marginalized people, is motivated by the incentive of profits.

It could be suggested that the United States' approach to violence is via the concept of private property. That is, violence itself is managed as if it were a form of property. Under hegemonic dominance, the violence belongs to the USA, and anyone who decides to resort to it must rent it and receive a stamp of approval from them. As long as hired (or purchased) violence is complementary to the goal of expanding the empire, then it is acceptable. In 2017 alone, we witnessed the murder of at least eight black trans women, an alarming increase in hate crimes against individuals belonging to categories subject to prejudice by the president's electoral base, as well as over 290 people killed, so far in 2017 , by US police officers[18] . Such violence is allowed, but violence in response to it is not.

On a macroscopic level, we see similar relations at work in the field of foreign policy. The United States, and the governments of their employees in the Middle East, in particular Israel and Saudi Arabia, everything is allowed, from missile attacks and aerial bombardments, to the financing, training and arming of terrorist groups in Syria [19]; each of these actions kills with impunity, yet all of this is underestimated by the international community. But the violence exercised to counter such external threats is subject to meticulous scrutiny. If another country, witnessing the horrendous violence perpetrated against black, indigenous, trans, queer and Muslim people (among many others) within the U.S., decided to establish a drone program aimed at a military base in California, using the pretext of "establishing democracy" for marginalized individuals, wouldn't he be called a terrorist? So why on earth, one might ask, is the United States not held up and prosecuted when it acts the same way?

In Walter Rodney's masterpiece, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, a book dedicated to tireless and detailed research on the various ways in which western countries have thrived from the economic, cultural and interpersonal exploitation of African nations, the author states: "it is a simple fact that no one can enslave anyone else for centuries without drawing from this a notion of superiority ... ". And indeed the USA, with its violent legacy of slavery, colonialism and both internal and global exploitation, is immersed in this sense of superiority, founded on the control and domination of others that Rodney speaks of. The same Rodney who was able to establish the connection of the struggles between the working class of Guyana, the Rastas of Jamaica, those of Dar es Salaam, the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta and the whole black diaspora more generally.First world to better understand their own positioning and responsibilities.

Walter Rodeny is just one of many militants committed throughout history to denounce the white supremacist monopoly of violence, and in studying and celebrating his legacy we see how perfectly his reflection applies to today's conditions. We said many, including Angela Davis, in particular her impressive 1971 interview in which she discusses the themes of violence and revolution [20], Malcolm X, Assata Shakur and Thomas Sankara. Equally important is to mention the militant and Native American scholar Winona LaDuke, frequently committed to highlighting the double standard applied by the USA in the treatment of indigenous peoples in reserves, and how the denial of resources such as drinking water and electricity to these individuals constitutes an act of underestimated violence.

In an interview with Black Agenda Report, ex-Democrat MEP Cynthia McKinney lashed out at the Democratic Party for her warlike stances, saying she felt "shame" and "embarrassment" for the many progressives unable to openly denounce the Obama's militarist work. He also discussed the dangers created by the ex-president for every black movement against the war, describing it as one of the most "concrete evils" taking place in the process of overturning a peace movement built on black anti-imperialist positions. McKinney expresses with genuine eloquence the sentiments of many blacks on the left, presenting us with an explicit frustration about the state of the anti-war movement, of which blacks, and their leaders as MLK jritself, they were once vanguard. At the moment, the principles of anti-imperialism and opposition to the war are completely abandoned. The Democratic Party is more careful to shore up leaders intent on making empty appeals for horizontal representation and diversity, and its base seems more interested in the idea of ​​intersectional imperialism than in rejecting it.

Even more insidious is the total cancellation of the black left, which is intentional and which affects the root of every anti-war and anti-imperialist principle to which black people on the left can still cling. That the commentator, and proud black liberal, Marcus H. Johnson was able to publish an entire article full of logical fallacies, such as merging Bernie Sanders and the "far left", while canceling the voices of the black left, as well as designating clearly the Clinton followers as the "true left", is further demonstration of the backward nature of pacification, or ignorance, characterizing that concrete post-Obama evil that McKinney talks about. As mentioned, Johnson's fallacies in the analysis are manifold, but the most shamefully unavoidable is precisely the cancellation of the black left. Those of us who, following the nature of the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist policy placed on the shoulders of the black radical tradition and the principles that it embraces, have opposed the entire Democratic Party, including the bogeyman Sanders, must be canceled in order for his argument to persist. Furthermore, the need to reaffirm an anti-imperialist policy, within our perspective of black liberation, is even more pressing in light of the authentic contempt for the lives of blacks and other non-whites, internationally, by that Democratic party which Johnson diligently supports. Not long ago, Malcolm X said that we are "political fools",

Removing the mask of the double standard inherent in the white hegemony on violence also means removing it from those institutions, and individuals, who hinder collective liberation. Put simply, anti-imperialism must once again become a non-negotiable principle of black popular radicalism. The exponent of the Black Panther Party, former political prisoner and militant Assata Shakur said “any community seriously concerned about its freedom must be concerned about that of other peoples too. The victory of the oppressed peoples everywhere in the world is also a victory for the black one. Every time a tentacle of imperialism is severed we are closer to liberation. " As black people, our liberation is definitively connected to that of the global South, and an anti-imperialist policy is not simply an abstract "theory", but a policy founded on enhancing and consolidating this struggle between us and the global South. Anti-imperialism is not cold theory, but the lifeblood of the reality of people internationally,

Examining the monopoly of violence through an anti-imperialist lens is essentially a pan-Africanist operation, an invitation to remember: what the oppressors are capable of doing to our brothers and sisters in the global South, they can easily do it even in the imperialist center, assuming that is not already happening. Not only do the police and the army share similar tactics to control "native" populations, but the police receive a surplus of military material to do this. [21], which should be understood as an indicator of an oppression that transcends national borders, in the service of preserving global hierarchies. In a society dominated by privileges granted to individuals supported by various systemic and institutional representatives, Western black people should have an anti-imperialist political operation in order to dismantle the US monopoly on violence. Walter Rodney taught us that every African has a responsibility, or if you prefer a duty, consisting in understanding the system and working on its overthrow, not in integrating into it.

How can we deal with the violence of oppressed peoples in a sort of void when, at the same time, black churches, synagogues and mosques are vandalized and hit by incendiary attacks in the post-Trump era; when immigrant families are separated and held in private prisons in poor condition for months [22]? When those who associate with the motto "protect and serve" shoot black people on the street, as if they were prey. If the US believes that it can use violence - justifiable or acceptable - internally, in front of our eyes, barely being challenged, what then to think about international violence to "establish democracy" and "fight terrorism" ? And within this monopoly of violence, who is allowed to use it as a means of helping the marginalized in the United States? And for this reason, in order to conceptualize an effective perspective of black liberation, it is necessary to include an anti-imperialist line that addresses the violence inflicted on us as cyclical and collateral to that exercised elsewhere. The rhetoric surrounding violence must necessarily lead us to deal with neglected issues of our existence under capitalist rule. The first step in deconstructing and decolonizing the violence of white supremacy consists in identifying, unmasking and making known the epistemological mechanisms which they use to justify their actions and legitimize themselves. And, if videos and images are sufficient to convince most of the progressives to collude with Trump on Syria, we must ask ourselves, without an anti-imperialist policy, what separates us from our oppressors? unmask and make known the epistemological mechanisms they use to justify their actions and legitimize themselves. And, if videos and images are sufficient to convince most of the progressives to collude with Trump on Syria, we must ask ourselves, without an anti-imperialist policy, what separates us from our oppressors? unmask and make known the epistemological mechanisms they use to justify their actions and legitimize themselves. And, if videos and images are sufficient to convince most of the progressives to collude with Trump on Syria, we must ask ourselves, without an anti-imperialist policy, what separates us from our oppressors?

"As a black woman, my politics, and my political affiliation, are tied to, and derive from, participation in the struggles for the liberation of my people, as well as that of the oppressed peoples around the world against US imperialism"

- Angela Davis

"Imagine this nation, made up of all peoples, intent on a crusade to make" the world a safe place for democracy! " Can you imagine the United States protesting against the atrocities of the Turks in Armenia, while they are silent on the crowds of Chicago and St. Louis; What is Leuven compared to Memphis, Waco, Washington, Dyersburg and Estill Springs? In short, what is the black man if not American Belgium, and how can America condemn in Germany what it commits, just as brutally, within its own borders? "

- WEB Du Bois

http://www.afrocubaweb.com/assata6.htm .
https://books.google.it/books?id=5B3cCg ... i&hl=it&sa = X & ved = 0ahUKEwiN5dWItujpAhVQwcQBHZhYChAQAA%% 20% 20% 20of% 20tre% 20worlds & f = false .
https://www.newsweek.com/company-behind ... ng-slaves- workers-apologizes-we-made-380168 .
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/27-impor ... now-about- the-black-panthers_n_56c4d853e4b08ffac1276462 .
https://jezebel.com/heres-how-new-texas ... 1726786557 .
https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-syr ... story.html .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... ice-shoot- it-at-protesters / ; https://twitter.com/YesAurielle/status/ ... 0304621568 ; https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standing ... 6055ff01ec ; https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/lr ... tests.html .
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/s ... -than-bush ; https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/23/poli ... or-speech/ .
https://mondoweiss.net/2011/11/on-slate ... bout-jews/ ; https://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/a- lynching-in-jerusalem-anatomy-of-jewish-racism / ; https://fpif.org/israels-blockade-gaza- ... y-violent/ .
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 79226.html ; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... explosion- attack-buses-convoy-aleppo-rebels-assad-regime-madaya-kefraya-foua-a7685186.html .
https://fair.org/home/hiding-us-role-in ... f-defense/ ; https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/ ... -yemen-war .
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/ ... 09641.html .
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... sm/258156/ .
https://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/Ahmad.htm .
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/civilian ... dd7ea6c4ff .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... 3391-11e4- a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html .
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/companie ... _n_2849569 ; https://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/14/asia ... moab-bomb/ .
https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2017/3 ... dered-2017 ; https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2016 ... -election- spate-hate-crimes-worse-than-post-911-experts-say / 93681294 / ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... ings-2017/ .
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/us-mili ... -news.html ; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/ ... kes-syria- 170317070831903.html ; https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hi ... 62071.html .
https://twitter.com/HalfAtlanta/status/ ... 8562778112 .
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/w ... .html?_r=0 .
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues ... -policies/ .
Original article: Mask Off: The Monopoly on Violence and Re-Invigorating an Anti-Imperialist Vision for Black Liberation by Devyn Springer

Translation and presentation by Zuseppe Sini

https://ottobre.info/2020/06/08/smasche ... ione-nera/

Re-translated by Google Translator
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 10, 2020 11:46 am

Philadelphia rises up against racism and repression in historic march
By Jordan WhelchelJun 09, 2020

Image
Photo: Liberation News

On Saturday, June 6 Philadelphians came together for one of the largest protests in the city in decades, demanding justice for George Floyd, victims of police brutality, and all those who face racist oppression.

Approximately 100,000 people assembled by the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in a rally organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Members of the Working Educators caucus of the Philadelphia Teachers Union, Reclaim Philadelphia, Beyond Arrests: Re-Thinking Systematic Oppression, Socialist Alternative, and the PSL spoke about the systematic police violence targeting Black America and the need for liberation from the racist, capitalist system that sustains it.

Rallying at the museum

An hour before the program was set to begin, hundreds of people had already gathered in front of the museum. Members of the PSL set up tents for food, water and medical aid. These were quickly filled by scores of people who were eager to help each other stay safe and healthy during the day’s events. Meanwhile, Girls Rock Philly set up the sound system that would later carry the speakers’ messages to the crowd, with the help of a generator lent by the recently unionized workers of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Also early on the scene were a number of large trucks blocking all the on-ramps and off-ramps to I-676. The previous Monday, protesters had peacefully marched onto the highway. Just minutes afterward, without warning, state troopers and SWAT officers began firing mace, rubber bullets and tear gas at the protesters, who desperately tried to escape the constant barrage of tear gas by scrambling up steep hills and climbing over tall fences.


Protesters struggle to escape tear gas as police attack the peaceful June 1 demonstration. Photo: Liberation News

This unprovoked attack caused a great deal of controversy among city officials. Four city councilors introduced a resolution to ban the use of tear gas on civilians, while Mayor Kenney and Police Commissioner Outlaw tried to justify the attack through outright lies that were disproved by aerial footage. As a result, Saturday’s demonstration also became an opportunity for the people of Philadelphia to express their rejection of police repression of protest.

Shortly before the rally got underway, the wide Ben Franklin Parkway was filled with people. From the steps of the museum, one could see hundreds more constantly pouring in from City Hall and the surrounding streets. The flow of people did not stop even after the rally began, growing from tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand. Among those present, there was a tangible sense of awe.

In addition to calling for justice for George Floyd and all victims of racist police violence, the march raised three key demands. First, that the police should be defunded and demilitarized, and that those resources be shifted to public services like education, healthcare, housing and the arts. Second, protesters demanded that Governor Wolf get the National Guard off the city’s streets, where in the previous few days they had acted like an occupying army. Finally, they called for the resignation of Danielle Outlaw, Philly’s Police Commissioner, after she allowed and then lied about Monday’s unprovoked attack by police on peaceful protesters. The crowd voiced their unity with these demands through chants, applause, and the signs they carried.

The rally concluded with a performance by youth drumline Xtreme Cre8tionz. Whatever the enthusiasm of the crowd before, this raised their spirits all the more and prepared them to march on City Hall.

On the march to City Hall

The crowd lined up behind two massive banners demanding justice for George Floyd and an end to police repression, then began their procession down Ben Franklin Parkway. Batala, an Afro-Brazilian drum group based in Philly, lent their rhythm and energy to the march, and even synced up with the chants.

Perhaps the most inspiring moment was a drum-backed rendition of a familiar chant that builds from “I…” to “I believe…” and eventually to “I believe that we will win.” When the whole chant came together, the crowd exploded with energy. At low points in the movement in the past, this message has helped to rekindle people’s morale. But this was different — it was something people felt was immediately true.

Coming full circle

After wrapping around City Hall, the march moved up Broad Street to Spring Garden Avenue, which led it back to the steps of the museum. Aerial footage shows that, from the lead banners to the tail end, it reached nearly a mile — something those on the ground could not possibly conceive. Even standing on the museum steps as the protesters arrived, it was difficult to grasp just how many people were on the move together.

Despite the heat and sun, the people still had energy left when they arrived back at the museum. Mecca Bullock of the PSL, who had emceed the opening rally and led the chants at the front of the march, took her place on the mic once again speaking to what everyone had just seen for themselves — that no matter how violently the police try to suppress the fight for justice, this uprising for Black liberation will continue.

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

Gotta say PSL is handling this much better than the clowns at WSWS, presenting much better than I'd seen the past couple years on twitter.
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:22 pm

Time to Sharpen Our Weapons and Wits
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 11 Jun 2020

Time to Sharpen Our Weapons and Wits

Image
Time to Sharpen Our Weapons and Wits

Having not yet won real power over the police, this is no time for a lull or a truce -- it’s time to sharpen our political instruments and deepen the mass movement’s social penetration.

“The objective is to seize and exercise people’s power in our communities, and to defend the people’s rights and interests.”

The awesome power of massed, militant people in motion has been manifest since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Much of the world now knows Floyd’s name; majorities of Americans say they support “Black Lives Matter”; New York City’s mayor pledged to slash his cops’ budget in deference to the Black Lives Matter demand to defund the police; the Minneapolis city council has promised to move towards disbanding their police force, in the spirit of outright abolition; and the grassroots demand for community control of police – previously rejected out of hand by most city councils – is now part of the “mainstream” political conversation. So massive and swift has been the swing in popular sentiment against the police – the coercive organs of the State – that “A&E has decided not to run new episodes of ‘Live PD’ this Friday and Saturday, while Paramount Network has delayed the Season 33 launch of ‘Cops,’” according to Variety magazine.

“Movement” politics is how the people flex their power, while electoral politics under a corporate duopoly system is the domain of the moneyed classes. This is a lesson learned in the Sixties -- a period when some years saw as many as 5,000 separate demonstrations. The makeup of the U.S. House and Senate did not change dramatically during that tumultuous decade. Political contributions kept most incumbents in office, year after year, as is the case today. But, for a time, the lawmakers behaved differently -- voting for civil rights and social justice measures they had not previously supported -- when confronted with masses of determined people in motion, who sometimes burned cities,

“Electoral politics under a corporate duopoly system is the domain of the moneyed classes.”

Movement politics was finally quashed in the latter part of the Sixties by a combination of lethal force and political seduction. A national policy of mass Black incarceration, supported by both corporate parties, criminalized Black people as a group, while federal and local police waged a murderous, dirty war to crush Black radicals. On the seduction front, the Democratic Party opened its doors to a hungry cohort of Black politicians and aspiring businessmen who preached that the movement must shift gears “from the streets to the suites” – the beginnings of today’s Black Misleadership Class.

By 1979, after a decade of Black electoral victories in cities abandoned by whites, everyone was singing McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” – but the mass movement had long been snuffed out. The Black-white economic gap – which had briefly shrunken as a result of social justice victories in the Sixties -- was beginning to widen, and mass Black incarceration ravaged the Black social fabric. But the Black political class and a small elite of entrepreneurs, professionals and entertainers were doing better than ever – and they were all-in with the Democratic Party, which soon succeeded in subverting virtually every civic organization in Black America. The spoils of a long-dead mass movement of the streets had ultimately accrued to a tiny sliver of Black folks in suites.

“A hungry cohort of Black politicians and aspiring businessmen preached that the movement must shift gears ‘from the streets to the suites.’”

For four decades, Black America was stalled in a political dead zone in which the only sustained politics was that which took place in the Democratic Party half of the corporate duopoly. As servants of forces hostile to Black people, Black politicians consistently acted against the interests of their constituents, collaborating in the destruction of public housing and the gentrification of Black neighborhoods. In the ultimate act of betrayal, the Black Misleadership Class lovingly embraced the Mass Black Incarceration Regime. In 2014, just two months before Michael Brown was gunned down by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against a bill that would have halted the Pentagon’s infamous 1033 program that funnels billions of dollars in military weapons and gear to local police departments. The emergence of what came to be called the “Black Lives Matter movement” had no substantive effect on Black members of Congress. In 2018, 75 percent of them supported a bill that makes police a “protected class” and assault on police a “hate crime.”

“The emergence of what came to be called the ‘Black Lives Matter movement’ had no substantive effect on Black members of Congress.”

These are the same scoundrels that this week “took a knee” in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall along with their boss, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – the same Democratic leader that refused to hold hearings on the Katrina catastrophe in 2005 for fear that the Democrats would lose white votes in 2006 for being too closely associated with Black people. But, just as the U.S. Congress in the Sixties responded to mass movements in the street, so Pelosi’s Democrats offered legislation that “forces federal police to use body and dashboard cameras, ban chokeholds, eliminates unannounced police raids known as ‘no-knock warrants,’ makes it easier to hold police liable for civil rights violations and calls for federal funds to be withheld from local police forces who do not make similar reforms.”

These are palliatives that have only been offered because of the presence of masses of people in the streets. Don’t thank the Democrats – the credit goes to the activists that have been disrupting the racist social order that both parties, including the vast majority of Black lawmakers, have maintained for the four generations since we last had a mass political movement. Given the recent phenomenal rise in popularity of “Black Lives Matter,” which is now supported by a majority of Americans and overwhelming numbers of Blacks, the police reforms are likely to pass the House -- and possibly even the Republican-controlled Senate, in some form. But these measures do not empower the oppressed – they are only a response to the power that Blacks and our numerous non-Black allies have shown in the streets: the power to disrupt and shame the ruling order in the United States, and the threat of much more to come.

“’Black Lives Matter’ is now supported by a majority of Americans”

Having not yet won real power over the police – the coercive organs of government that claim a monopoly on the use of force -- this is no time for a lull or a truce. Rather, it is time to sharpen our political instruments and deepen the mass movement’s social penetration. The objective is to seize and exercise people’s power in our communities, and to defend the people’s rights and interests – the opposite of the role played by the police, who defend property rights and white supremacy, whatever the cops’ color or ethnicity.

Community control of police and outright abolition of police are wholly compatible demands, Both are predicated on the right of the people to shape, control or abolish the coercive organs of the state, at least in their own communities. Defunding of the police is about allocation of resources, not power, which is why New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been repeatedly punked by his own cops, can claim to favor some level of defunding. However, a significant section of “Black Lives Matter” – those under the influence of Alicia Garza and her corporate philanthropic backers -- is clearly resistant to community control of the police and only gives lip service to abolition as a goal for the far-off future. We can expect that the contradictions between that faction of “Black Lives Matter” and other activists will deepen – maybe rather quickly – since the conflict is rooted in who’s paying the bills.

“Defunding the police is about allocation of resources, not power.”

The lifeblood of social movements against white supremacism, capitalism and imperialism is solidarity among all the victims of these isms. Alicia Garza actively discourages Black solidarity with anybody outside the borders of the United States – doubtless as a condition of her funding. That’s why her Black Census project, which last year conducted the biggest survey of U.S. Blacks in history, chose not to ask a single question on foreign policy. Black Americans have historically been the most pro-peace, anti-militarism constituency in the nation and, besides Arab Americans, the most empathetic to the plight of Palestinians. The Black Census is most useful as a domestic issues guide for Democratic politicians – which is how it is cleverly packaged. Garza has chosen to be an asset to the Party – a disturbing situation, given her status in the “movement.”

The Democratic Party is the movement’s greatest institutional political foe, since it infests and dominates virtually all Black civic organizations. (The Republican Party is not a factor in Black America’s internal workings.) The Democrats are the Party of capital, of the bankers, the people displacers, the warmongers – and a Black Caucus that is allied overwhelming with the police. However, Black America is a one-party polity, due to a system that reserves half of the duopoly for the White Man’s Party, the GOP. Therefore, some genuine Black progressives, and even revolutionaries, have run for office, and won, as Democrats, for lack of any other viable platform. Essentially, this very small cohort of righteous officeholders are anti-Democrats who fight the corporate Party machine at every juncture. Among them are Charles and Inez Barron, the nominally Democratic husband-wife team representing a Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood in the city council and state legislature; and St. Louis alderman Jesse Todd, also a nominal Democrat.

“This very small cohort of righteous officeholders are anti-Democrats who fight the corporate Party machine at every juncture.”

Todd and the Barrons are members of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (as am I), which holds its annual Electoral School, via Zoom, June 13 and 14 . The Coalition, made up of 15 organizations plus many individual activists, has promulgated a 19-point National Black Agenda for Self-Determination that puts forward principled, self-determinationist positions on the broadest range of issue-areas, including community control of police. Black Is Back’s approach to electoral politics is simple: the Coalition will endorse no candidate for office who is not in accord with the National Black Agenda for Self-Determination.

The term “Black Power,” as we learned in the Sixties, can be misused in myriad ways. Black Democratic Party loyalists claim that Blacks were empowered by voting for Joe Biden in huge numbers in the primaries, thus saving his presidential candidacy. “Hands that once picked cotton, now pick presidents,” the Black Democrats exult, as if power flows from abject servitude to the corporate dictatorship. In reality, Black voters gave the presidential nomination to a politician who claims he “wrote” the crime bill that resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Black people; whose opposition to single payer health care guarantees that Black people will continue to die disproportionately from damn near all causes; and who opposes defunding the police, a minimal demand of the current mass movement.

The oligarchs that rule the country and control both of its corporate parties and all of its major media want the people to believe that politics is limited to the electoral process, and that street activism, labor militancy and community organizing are outside the realm of “real” politics. The events of the past ten days have proven the opposite: that massive street actions and unrelenting people-pressure can yield far better results than decades of pulling levers for corporate duopoly candidates.

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

https://www.blackagendareport.com/time- ... s-and-wits
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:39 pm

Revolt, rupture of the social pact and state of emergency in the US
Mission Truth
Jun 10 · 7 min read

Image
Foto: Andrew Renneisen / Getty Images

The most consistent views on the revolt in force in the United States agree that the murder of George Floyd is not the root cause. A broad-spectrum reaction is developing in that country, which is based on socio-historical and socio-economic reasons.
If we go to events, there is not a single version of them that can fully explain them. Due to their multi-causal quality and effervescence, what we can conclude is that they represent the cracks in the American corporate project, with their exposed failures of origin and the triggers that today make the streets burn.
"... a nation, under God, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all"
The United States is a dream founded on its Constitution, or at least in formal terms, a social project that declared in its preamble "to form a more perfect Union", to "establish justice, guarantee national tranquility, tend to common defense, promoting the general well-being and ensuring the benefits of freedom for us and for our later life ”.
Its elementary premise is summarized in all the symbolism of the oath before the American flag, which says:
"I swear allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic it represents, a nation, under God, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all."
What was supposed to be the libertarian synthesis for the world founded on the new continent, we know, has been since its inception the construction of the largest empire, the one that has emerged in modern times as a paradigm of force and a civilizing project at the expense of blood and fire.
The entire planet is concerned with how the American machinery has subdued nations and how, through war, the economy, and political co-optation, they have consolidated as a hegemonic force. But we do not usually look at the hegemonic relations in that country or the details of the oppression practiced indoors.
The history of oppression on American soil has many historical corners and the one that stands out today, that of oppression of blackness, already accumulates thousands of episodes that account for a racist and economically exclusive order from the roots.
One of the most sadly remembered events is the 1921 Tulsa massacre in the Greenwood, Oklahoma district, also known in English as “The Black Wall Street,” where the country's most prosperous African-American community flourished in that time and where thousands of families had an impetuous commercial and financial activity, becoming a model of the "American dream" for the successors of the slave class.

Image
A murdered body lying on the streets of Tulsa in the days of the massacre, June 1, 1921. Photo: Tulsa Historical Society

The dream for them ended in tragedy. In short, for an alleged crime also allegedly committed by a member of that community, hordes of targets attacked them with firearms and torches. The estimated fatal balance (impossible to determine exactly due to the police bias of the time) is close to 3,000 deaths. More than 6,000 blacks were detained and another 10,000 were evicted from the place, as their 35 blocks were cremated by that army of supremacist whites.
The Tulsa massacre, sometimes euphemistically called the "Tulsa race riots," is symbolic for summing up the resignification of the American social project. It is, in fact, a pact that for blacks has always been broken.
Recently, the outstanding African-American philosopher Cornel West during an interview referred to the current popular reaction in his country as a result of the national project's failure of origin. "The United States is a failed social experiment," he said bluntly.
"This failure has been unfolding for 400 years and although it has worked for some, when it comes to working poor people, but especially poor working people of color, it is a failure," says West.
In his view, the problem was one of structure. American society, which seems to be constantly changing, is the result of an articulated form of power that constantly acts so that nothing changes. "It is very difficult for decent Americans who really hate white supremacy, who are anti-racist, to gain some kind of power, to have some kind of organization that enables the fundamental transformation that the American empire needs."
However, the peaceful mobilizations and other expressions of fury that are shaking the United States have characteristics that go beyond yet another anger of African-Americans, such as those that have occurred since before the sadly remembered murder of Rodney King by the police. from Los Angeles in the early 90s.
The rupture of the American social pact as an internal "threat"
The mobilizations in the United States have a high load of social frustration on a wide spectrum, that is, far beyond the issue of police and institutional racism.
Perhaps the current context is ideal, from the tensions generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the economy on an unstoppable path to decline due to the pandemic and also the component that lies in the Donald Trump presidency as an accelerator of contradictions.
If we understand that the American power structure has accelerated its fragmentation since Trump's rise, because it is the same result of an elite struggle and because it is in competition with the deep state that modulates political power, it is essential to assume that this rupture in the political establishment is the result of a deterioration of the social base. The American Social Compact is in a silent crisis that is increasingly difficult to repair.
The security apparatus itself, projecting itself, recognizes the existence of new tensions generated by the exhaustion of the "dream" and the "well-being" on which the country stands.
Recently, the newspaper The Intercept obtained documents from the Pentagon, where they point out that a group of prospective officers for high-ranking military officers develop a war game or exercise that refers to the setting of a military response to a domestic rebellion starring a segment called "Generation Z ” , That is, those born since 1996.
The Intercept explains that, according to the Pentagon, many members of this generation could forge the so-called "Zbellion", on the basis of discontent generated from significant events in American reality, such as the police-military state that was erected after September 11. , the budding economic recession, the precariousness of consumption, the inaccessibility to health and housing, and even the high debts inherited by university studies.
Basically, the Pentagon refers, without calling it that, to the picture of inequality as a sign of rupture of the "American dream", which is today the portrait of the United States where the working class is being more relegated and precarious, while the great wealth continues to increase in a few hands.

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Ku Klux Klan meeting in Drumright, Oklahoma, 1922. Photo: Tulsa Historical Society

In this scenario, the "Zbellion" would have the combination of all the elements that are already on the table on US soil today: highly emotional protests, civil war, violence against property, use of new technologies to unite the response social, absence of visible leadership and large-scale cyber attacks. To later evolve to other derivations, such as terrorism, institutional fracture, divergence between the government instances and use of military forces by the high national power. The coincidences of this with the current picture are evident.
In the military exercise, the Pentagon refers that this confrontation will be from impoverished multiracial social layers against corporations, a context that will force the military forces to apply different levels of force within their country in ways they have not been known to. establish order and stop the plot of "chaos".
The agendas and probabilities
As of today, the results and evolution of events in the United States are unspeakable, because simultaneously with the social response there are also increasingly exposed agendas that go to the trend of fragmentation and reformulation of the power structure as today known.
On the one hand, Trump inciting supremacism and focused on sustaining his governance. On the other hand, Democrats trying to capitalize on social unrest on an electoral roadmap to revive the status quo . For the time being, the growing trends within the US government structure and other corporate and media are also indecipherable, which have traits of trying to build a color revolution on American soil, riding the crisis and social frustration.
Indispensable to understand the latter is to weigh the "disagreements" between Trump and the Pentagon for the use of military forces , as well as the incorporation of the narrative of "dictator" directed at Trump openly in media such as CNN.
It is also essential to consider the possibility of orchestrated actions of dosed "constructive chaos", very American-style but often applied outside its borders, as an additional ingredient to the legitimate outbreak.
If there are hidden agendas, they will not take so long to expose themselves. If this is confirmed, it would be evident that social reaction and blackness lack a political horizon and that the American state of exception plans to establish itself as a mechanism of force and control before the de facto dissolution of the social and institutional pact. There is nothing to reform it, nor anything that looks today with possibilities of replacing it.
What we can take for granted today is that the structure of American hegemony sustained by its model and social cohesion is being disfigured, and the result could be far from what we have known.

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 13, 2020 1:22 pm

This is not an Aberration; Violence is Central to the History, and Present, of the United States
Louis Allday

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would fly a flag from its window of in Fifth Avenue each time a lynching took place. Unknown photographer, NYC 1936.



The Negro youth and moderate must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries.

J Edgar Hoover, 1968

The American sense of reality and the American sense of the world has been somehow hopelessly inhibited by the attempt to get away from something which is really theirs.

James Baldwin, 1971



There is a widespread assumption that the violence and destruction witnessed over the last week are an aberration to the American experience. Countless headlines and social media posts, written in response to the latest onslaught of violence unleashed by the police against protesters, have employed a similar framing, which is roughly as follows: you think this is a miscellaneous non-Western state? Well, surprise, it’s America! Despite its pervasiveness, the notion that violence committed against its own citizens is what other, ostensibly less civilised non-Western nations do – not the ‘democracy’ of America – is a racist and ahistorical position that serves to conceal an almost unbroken line of violence against ‘its own people’ and countless others around the world since the US’ inception.

The negative comparisons with other countries, such as Iran, Venezuela, and the DPRK – nations deemed official enemies of the US, as though the US has stooped down to a lower moral plane through its recent actions, serve to perpetuate racist and chauvinistic myths about a once righteous US that never existed. As Samir Amin has argued in The American Ideology, even its supposedly virtuous revolution was in fact only a limited war of independence devoid of any social dimension, that carried out genocide against the Native Americans and never challenged slavery.

For many, the protests and police violence of the last week have vividly evoked the revolutionary era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A period in which, galvanised by the Black Panther Party (BPP) and other organisations inspired by and linked to it, there was a sustained period of urban unrest throughout the US. These uprisings were crushed with overwhelming force by the country’s intelligence services, police, army and other paramilitary forces. One of the most infamous incidents of the period was the attack on a pro-BPP, anti-Vietnam war protest at Kent State University in 1970, in which National Guard members indiscriminately shot and bayoneted student protesters, killing four and injuring many more. Many of the troops that suppressed protests at Kent State, Yale and other universities all over the US in this period had been explicitly told by their officers that ‘you will not be successfully prosecuted if you shoot someone while performing a duty’. In short, they had been given a license to kill. And used it.

Fifty years later, it is almost certain those National Guard troops – who are currently being sent to occupy the streets of multiple American cities – have received similar assurances from their superiors, foremost amongst which is their Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump, who has not only justified but also explicitly called for lethal violence against protesters. However despicable those infamous killings at Kent State were, what is important to understand is that they are illustrative of the manner with which the US state – be it led by a Democrat or Republican administration – habitually deals with its citizens who dare to resist it.

The Kent State murders were not exceptional. In fact, this particular incident received the level of attention it has because the victims were white college students. Many comparable incidents throughout US history, where the victims were black, have been erased from the mainstream historical record. Destruction of black lives and property on an even larger scale, such as the annihilation of ‘Black Wall Street’ in Greenwood, Tulsa in 1921 when over 300 of its black inhabitants were killed, is similarly suppressed from popular memory.

The treatment meted out by the US state and its actors upon black protesters and revolutionaries has been unremittingly brutal. The 1969 murder of the BPP youth leader, Fred Hampton, is indicative of the state’s ruthlessness when it deals with the threat posed by such inspirational leaders, who, notably in the case of Hampton, called for unity between races in the name of a proletarian revolution against capitalism and the US state. At just 21 years old, Hampton was drugged by an FBI infiltrator and then, while comatose in bed, executed by members of the Chicago Police Department through multiple gunshots to the head. Such callous state violence against prominent leaders who are deemed capable of uniting the black American masses against the state remains commonplace to this day. The fate of several of those individuals who led the protests in Ferguson in 2014 is testament to this continuity.

During the late 1960s in particular, the FBI genuinely feared that such a unifying leader, a black ‘messiah’, could bring about ‘a real “Mau Mau” in America, the beginning of a true black revolution’. Indeed, just one week before Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in 1968, the FBI had cited him, alongside Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), as prime contenders to assume such a position. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X must be understood as part of a much broader wave of violence, intimidation, sabotage and repression focussed against the Black Nationalist movement and its allies, most notably by the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign (originally directed against the US Communist Party). The US state was so determined to crush any and all internal resistance that, in the words of one US general, if the uprisings did not die down as the 1970s progressed, the Pentagon was ready to turn American cities into ‘scenes of destruction approaching those of Stalingrad during World War II’. That willingness to use indiscriminate violence to crush internal uprisings has never dissipated, as the events in LA in 1992, Ferguson in 2014, Standing Rock in 2016-17 and nation-wide over the past week have made transparent.

There is a further layer of offense to the propensity of many Americans to only comprehend this recent wave of violence as though the US is temporarily acting like other implicitly ‘worse’ countries and that it should really be happening somewhere else like Caracas, Baghdad or Beirut. These ‘bad’ examples are frequently associated with violence in the mind of an average American as a consequence of the very same factor that now threatens US cities: the unceasing brutality of the US state. Beirut especially has become a lazy by-word for chaotic urban violence to many Americans of a certain age as a result of its civil war, and especially the 1980s period of that conflict, when a number of American citizens were kidnapped and some killed. But what is forgotten is that US marines were occupying Lebanon at the time; that the US was directly involved in sparking and sustaining the civil war itself; and that the US is responsible for some of its worst violence, including the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila.

As so many of those slain black revolutionaries understood all too well, there is a direct link between the daily racist violence inflicted upon them and their fellow black Americans and the violence the US military inflicted against civilians in Vietnam and elsewhere overseas; it is the intrinsic and ongoing link between racism, capitalism and imperialism. As the BPP revolutionary George Jackson – himself murdered by the state in San Quentin Prison in 1971 – wrote to Angela Davis a year before he was killed: ‘it’s no coincidence that Malcolm X and MLK died when they did ... remember what was on his [X’s] lips when he died. Vietnam and economics, political economy’. X had explicitly stated: ‘you can’t have capitalism without racism. And if you find a person without racism ... and they have a philosophy that makes you sure they don’t have this racism in their outlook, usually they’re socialists’. At this point he had begun working with the governments of a number of recently independent African countries, many of them socialist, to pass a UN resolution condemning the US as a colonial power for its treatment of its black citizens. This proposal ‘terrified the American power elite’ and X was eliminated before he could proceed with it.

In Blood in My Eye, a book which Jackson heroically managed to finish in prison shortly before he was murdered as well, he wrote:

The US has established itself as the mortal enemy of all people’s governments, all scientific-socialist mobilization of consciousness everywhere on the globe, all anti-imperialist activity on earth. The history of this country in the last fifty years or more, the very nature of all its fundamental elements, and its economic, social, political and military mobilization distinguish it as the prototype of the international fascist counterrevolution.

Jackson’s observation has only proven to be more accurate in the intervening half century. Therefore, in addition to their solidarity with the righteous cause of black Americans, it is for this reason, too, the eyes of many millions all over the world are now focussed so intensely on events in the US. Anything that has the capacity to weaken the US internally serves to strengthen the position and revolutionary potential of all progressive forces everywhere in the world. Jackson wrote at length about the potentially global significance of a revolution led by what he termed the US’ ‘black colony’ – a concern shared by the US state. As revealed by Maurice Bishop, one of the State Department’s primary fears concerning the Marxist-Leninist revolution in the small Caribbean island of Grenada in the early 1980s, was the fact that that its leadership and 95 percent of the country’s people were black, and therefore it could have ‘a dangerous appeal to 30 million black people in the United States’. This was deemed unacceptable and in 1983, after years of other means of sabotage against it, the US military invaded Grenada and swiftly crushed its short-lived revolutionary process.

Contrary to the blatantly racist notion that this ‘great nation’ should not lower itself to the standards of its enemies, it must be stated plainly that the US is in fact the global expert on assassinations, crushing internal dissent, controlling and intimidating the media and various acts of mass violence against protesters and opposition groups – all the very things that many people are now absurdly claiming to be ‘un-American’. The events of the past week have demonstrated this clearly. What remained of the superficial mask of American liberalism has – at least for now – dropped entirely, exposing the ugly fascism at its core.

In the days and weeks to come, many people – including some on the left – will scramble to pull that mask back up. Reforms, they will say, can address this problem, thereby implying the US remains a redeemable democracy morally superior to its enemies. But the reality is that the US is what it routinely accuses its enemies of being: an authoritarian, militarised police state that surveils, brutalises, imprisons and murders people at home and abroad with impunity – all in the service of the interests of its capitalist oligarchy, which lays claim to everything, everywhere.





Louis Allday is a writer based in London.

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by solidgold » Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:49 am

Anyone have a handle of what’s going on? Shit seems a bit like a free for all. Twitter responses are def wild too.

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:09 pm

solidgold wrote:
Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:49 am
Anyone have a handle of what’s going on? Shit seems a bit like a free for all. Twitter responses are def wild too.
I dunno,seems like a slow simmer at the moment best I can tell from here in the boonies. I see some Nazis started shooting in New Mexico & I expect there'll be more of that especially if the revolt stays in the news. Careful. Thing about them, they got arrested. As I try to tell those who see a MAGA militia revolt as a serious threat, 'whose side is the state on?' If the state doesn't support them, even surreptitiously, then they ain't shit. The state reserves violence unto itself. No doubt a lot of local cop shops(like here) would join them if unopposed but the rich don't seem ready to unleash those dogs, there must be Order.

Haven't been on twitter for a while, my last peek was pretty disheartening as I saw too many adopting conspiracy mania over CV.

Meanwhile the prez continues to do damage to imperialism in a random manner, like a high status drunk at a party blundering about while the hosts trail him putting things right while keeping up appearances.

Some sort of organization, leadership, gotta come from this or it will be for naught, They will give the cops more money, 'ban' 'chokeholds', but the cops will keep their guns....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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