Police, prison and abolition

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 18, 2020 2:14 pm

News > U.S.
US: Trump Sends Undercover Police to Quell Portland's Protests

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Camouflaged federal officials swinging gas contraption, Portland, Oregon, July 17, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @killendave

Published 18 July 2020

U.S. Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) Thursday denounced that President Donald Trump has deployed federal agents in Portland, Oregon, dressed in camouflage but without any visible insignia, to round up and detain U.S. citizens.

"Multiple videos released on digital platforms show federal officials approaching people, arresting them and leaving without any explanation to justify the arrest," OPB said in a statement.

Since at least July 14, officials have driven through downtown Portland in unidentified vehicles to detain participants in the protests that have raged for over six weeks.

"They threw me into the van, covered my face, and ordered me to put my hands on my head," protestor Mark Pettibone described to local media.
Here are commandeered federal troops in Portland rushing protesters and then beating them to get them to disperse. These images, along with the bullhorn announcement, are chilling. (video via @MrOlmos.) pic.twitter.com/cERSMLQBD3

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) July 18, 2020
Afterward the arrest, Pettibone was taken to federal court. When he asked for a lawyer, he was released. He was never charged, nor was the reason for his arrest explained to him.

Videos of similar arrests, without probable cause, are circulating in the social media.

"It seems that they were kidnapping people from the streets," attorney Juan Chavez explained.

The attitude of federal officials is illegal and unconstitutional. They could be acting under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, which authorizes the detention of U.S. citizens suspected of being terrorists.

"In that case, the real War on Terrorism is happening at home," Chavez added.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/us- ... -0001.html

Perceived existential threats, or even mutterings, must be met head on, the prez will not tolerate a communist uprising....Would not be surprised if this was entirely a military operation, the tactics got 'School of the Americas' written all over them, just like Columbia.

More vicious madness from this shit stain or is he just anticipating a little?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 20, 2020 1:45 pm

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Portland Mayor Condemns Masked Federal Agents Abducting Protesters
July 19, 2020 orinocotribune activists, BORTAC, Federal agents, George Floyd, Human Rights, Minneapolis, Portland, protests, Trump, US
Human Rights Groups, Activists, And Local Politicians Are Decrying What Appears To Be The Trump Administration’s Latest Tactic To Crush Nationwide Protests That Erupted In Late May Over The Murder Of George Floyd By Minneapolis Police.

By Alan Macleod – Jul 18, 2020

Anonymous masked federal agents in military uniforms jump out of unmarked minivans, abducting seemingly random people on the street in Portland, frightening new viral videos show. Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection’s BORTAC have been sent to the city to tamp down of 49 days of continuous demonstrations against racist police brutality. The move appears to be the Trump administration’s latest tactic to crush the nationwide protests that erupted in late May over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police.


One video shows individuals in battle fatigues pull up beside a small group of people on a deserted Portland street, arresting one man without identifying themselves or saying anything and putting him into the back of a minivan. “It sounds more like abduction. It sounds like they’re kidnapping people off the streets,” said Juan Chavez, director of the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center, who has been working on issues of police brutality on protestors for weeks. “It’s like stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay,” he said, adding that he found the new events “terrifying.”

Repressive tactics have increased since Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf began involving himself and his department in the protests, with federal agents firing tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators. Homeland Security has justified its invasion, claiming that Portland has been “under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city. Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property.” The DHS claims that “violent anarchists” have wrecked the city, although the examples of destruction they give, such as graffiti and throwing rocks, appear trifling in comparison to abduction. Wolf himself arrived in Portland recently, declaring that, “Our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch.”

Wolf’s actions have received strong condemnation from demonstrators, human rights groups, and even local politicians who have unequivocally told federal agents to leave. Mayor of Portland Ted Wheeler claimed that, “This is clearly a coordinated strategy from the White House. It is irresponsible and it is escalating an already tense situation. Remove your heightened troop presence now,” adding that the city neither needed nor wanted their help. Local congressman Earl Blumenauer was similarly forthright, placing the blame for the violence on government forces. “Chad Wolf just arrived in Portland. Here’s my message: go home Chad and take your unlawful DHS agents with you. The Trump admin has no place occupying and inciting violence in our community,” he tweeted late last night.

The demonstrators can also count on the support of the American Civil Liberties Union, who issued a statement reading, “Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland are being assaulted — shot in the head, swept away in unmarked cars, repeatedly tear gassed — by uninvited and unwelcome federal officers. We won’t rest until these federal officers are gone.”

The “shot in the head” comment refers to the case of Donavan LaBella, a 26-year-old protester shot outside the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland on Saturday. LaBella was holding a speaker over his head when police shot him in the face at close range with a rubber bullet. Video shows him instantly collapse on the street. Even as others retrieve his body, a large pool of blood is already noticeable where he fell. LaBella’s mother confirmed he survived the incident, but that he needed facial reconstruction surgery, with doctors inserting a titanium plate into his head.



Portland has been a hotspot of protest since the police killing of George Floyd on May 25 and has seen seven weeks of nightly demonstrations. The Trump administration decided to confront the protests with force rather than negotiate or co-opt them, the president infamously suggesting the National Guard should shoot any “looters.” A recent poll found that two-thirds of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement. Thus, it is unlikely that the new escalation of violence will win the president many new supporters, something he may need come November’s election.



Feature Image: Police stand as protesters gather during a demonstration, July 16, 2020 in Portland, Ore. Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian via AP.

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

(Popular Resistance)

https://orinocotribune.com/portland-may ... rotesters/

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

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To End “Unconstitutional Nightmare,” ACLU Sues Trump Administration Over use of Secret Police in Portland
July 19, 2020 Jake Johnson aclu, Black Lives Matter, Portland, secret police, Trump, US
“This is a fight to save our democracy.”

By Jake Johnson – Jul 18, 2020

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon sued the Trump administration late Friday over its deployment of federal agents to Portland, where unidentified officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service have been detaining Black Lives Matter protesters without explanation and using indiscriminate force to crush demonstrations.

“This is a fight to save our democracy,” Kelly Simon, interim legal director with the ACLU of Oregon, said in a statement. “Under the direction of the Trump administration, federal agents are terrorizing the community, risking lives, and brutally attacking protesters demonstrating against police brutality. This is police escalation on top of police escalation.”

“This is police escalation on top of police escalation. These federal agents must be stopped and removed from our city.”

—Kelly Simon, ACLU of Oregon

“These federal agents must be stopped and removed from our city,” Simon added. “We will continue to bring the full fire power of the ACLU to bear until this lawless policing ends.”

The lawsuit (pdf) against DHS and the U.S. Marshals Service—filed on behalf of legal observers and journalists who were recently assaulted by federal agents in Portland—aims to “block federal law enforcement from dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force against journalists or legal observers.” One of the plaintiffs, freelance photographer Matthew Lewis-Rolland, was shot in the back ten times with impact munitions during a recent demonstration.



The ACLU said the suit is “one of many” it plans to file against the Trump administration over its deployment of federal agents to Portland against the wishes of state and local political leaders, who have demanded the withdrawal of all federal law enforcement.

Federal officials have reportedly been patrolling Portland in unmarked vehicles and arresting demonstrators since at least July 14.

Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said “what is happening in Portland is an unconstitutional nightmare.”

“This is not law and order. This is lawlessness,” said Eidelman. “The ACLU will not let the government respond to protests against police brutality with still more brutality. We will continue to hold law enforcement at all levels of government accountable, just as we have nationwide.”



Featured image: Police confront demonstrators in Portland, Oregon on July 4, 2020. (Photo: John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

(Common Dreams)

https://orinocotribune.com/to-end-uncon ... -portland/

Can the ACLU stare down the Id of Capitalism? Hmm, doubt it and if so another sign Trump's goose is cooked. The cops, in whatever form, must be able to act with impunity, like a conquering army. Otherwise they will be unable to perform their duty, the defence of Capital. Set ups like civilian review boards, hemmed in by the 'stakeholders in repression', are mostly cosmetic and a distraction from proper action.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 27, 2020 2:17 pm

Meet the Youth Liberation Front behind a militant marathon of Portland protests
July 12, 2020 at 6:00 am Updated July 13, 2020 at 9:51 am

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In this July 1 photo, protesters feed plywood and pallets into fires around Portland’s historic Elk Fountain, donated to the city in 1900. The damage that evening to the foundation resulted in the statue’s removal until repairs can be done. (Hal Bernton / The Seattle Times)

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This June 15 sidewalk fire near businesses was one of more than 140 set during the protests that began in Portland in late May. It was put out by firefighters soon after this photo was taken. Later that evening, a second fire was set on a narrow street between two apartment buildings, causing concern from residents before it, too, was put out by firefighters. (Hal Bernton / The Seattle Times)

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A Facebook post by PNW Youth Liberation Front calls for a vigil and protest in Portland in memory of “our fallen comrade” Summer Taylor of Seattle.

r
PORTLAND — Shortly before 1 a.m. on July 5, as protesters braced for more long hours on the streets in Oregon’s largest city, the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front took to Twitter with a stern declaration.

Be like water, keep moving.

If you see someone smashing windows, shut the (expletive) up.

Walk, don’t run. Hold the front and back lines.

Well after protests against police have faded in many American cities, the Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front has emerged in Portland as a persistent militant voice, using social media to promote rallies, and offering tactical advice and commentary on gatherings that often have ended in confrontations with the police and arrests.

The conduct they champion has ignited a bitter debate about the direction these protests have taken in an ongoing drama that plays out nightly in front of the Multnomah County Justice Center and later in largely empty streets defined by block after block of boarded-up buildings. The core of downtown — in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the demonstrations — appears drained of much of the vitality that has long helped to define this Northwest city.

For the Youth Liberation Front’s anonymous leaders, these protests are part of the revolution. They are resolutely anti-capitalist and anti-fascist, and express disdain for those who work for reform within what they view as a failing political system.

In a podcast interview last October, three of their leaders, one of whom identified himself as still in high school, said they were spurred to activism over a range of issues that included climate change, law enforcement misconduct and the rise of right-wing hate groups.

They have affiliates in Seattle and other U.S. cities, and have gained thousands of new social media followers as they launched into promoting protests over the May 25 police killing of George Floyd. Recently on social media, they have displayed a battle-hardened bravado, scornful not just of baby boomers but white millennials who they view as too often unwilling to put their bodies on the line in protests.

A June 18 tweet from the group: “We are a bunch of teenagers armed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and yerba mate — we can take a 5 a.m. raid and be back on our feet a few hours later … we’ll be back again and again until every prison is reduced to ashes and every wall to rubble.”

They are by no means the only group that has organized protests in Portland: Big gatherings that attracted tens of thousands of people, and ended peacefully, were largely put together by others.

But they have been among the most outspoken, combining organizing skills and street savvy in what has evolved into a grueling more-than-40-day marathon for protesters and law enforcement officials who often stay on duty until deep into the early morning hours.

In court filings in U.S. District Court, county officials estimate that damage costs to the Justice Center building, as well as a nearby courthouse that on July 3 had 15 more windows shattered, will exceed $284,000. There have been 140 arson fires, most in trash bins, on the streets or sidewalks. But they also included a May 29 fire inside a first-floor office of the Justice Center, a high-rise that includes a county jail.

In July, protesters have focused more attention on the federal courthouse next to the Justice Center. The U.S. Attorney, in a July 6 filing, charged seven protesters with defacing the building and assaulting federal officers.

In Portland’s downtown area on May 29, some protesters joined in looting stores. In the days that followed, they have broken windows in banks, restaurants and other businesses and the glass in four doors of the side entrance to the historic Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Overall, this damage exceeds $4.5 million, according to documents filed by county and city officials in U.S. court.

Statues also have been defaced with graffiti and damaged.

On July 1 protesters lit fires fueled by plywood and pallets around a downtown Portland landmark — the Elk Fountain — located within sight of the Justice Center where police are based. The damage forced the statue’s removal.

In social media posts, Youth Liberation Front leaders portray acts of vandalism as part of the broader struggle to make big changes in America. They reject any effort — by police or other groups — to divide the protest movement into those who are peaceful and those who turn to violence.

“The Pigs are in a PR battle so they say there’s a difference from ‘peaceful’ and nonviolent protesters. When in fact what we are fighting is the ultimate form of violence, making any and all resistance self and community defense,” the Youth Liberation Front tweeted.

In interviews during protests, some youthful participants embraced those views.

“With real change comes a lot of collateral damage,” said one young man who attended a late-night protest and declined to give his name.

Both police and protesters face scrutiny
As the protests wear on, both police and protesters have, on occasion, come under harsh criticism.

On June 26, protesters set a Dumpster on fire and pushed it up to the side of a northeast Portland building that housed minority-owned businesses and a police precinct station, where people were inside and had to contend with an exit door barricaded shut from the outside. Two suspects, an 18-year-old white man and a 22-year-old Black man, have since been arrested.

Video filed by police in court show that this was a controversial action even among protesters on the scene.

“Put that goddamn fire out, that is a Black building, Black business,” said one voice in a video filed by Portland city officials in U.S. District Court and posted online by The Oregonian.

The next day, Black community leaders lined up outside the building to denounce the arson.

“I know whoever was behind this thinks they were doing it — or perhaps are trying to have us think they were doing it — in the names of Black Lives Matter,” said Tony Hopson, president of Self Enhancement Inc., an organization that assists youth in poverty. “We know that it was just the opposite. Not only was it not about Black Lives Matter. It was against Black Lives Matter.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler joined them, calling the arson “blatant criminal violence — violence that is totally unacceptable.”

Less than a week later, police were taking heat from a prominent state politician.

Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, a Democrat who represents North Portland, lashed out at them for “the utter inability to exercise restraint” in a response to a July 1 protest in her district. In front of a police union building, officers used tear gas that spread to motorists despite a U.S. District Court restraining order restricting its use to times when life and safety are at risk. The police also arrested three journalists, and Kotek said the police conduct represented an unnecessary escalation against people exercising their freedom of assembly.

In response, Daryl Turner, union president of the Portland Police Association and who is Black, accused “a small number of individuals” of having “hijacked the racial equity platform of peaceful protests.” In a follow-up statement, Turner declared their “destructive and chaotic behavior defines the meaning of white privilege.”

Chris Davis, a deputy chief of the Portland Police Bureau, at a July 8 briefing with reporters, said that officers have been pushed longer and harder than he has ever seen during what he termed an “unprecedented” stretch of protests that have injured more than 100 people, including police.

Davis said police have been hit with frozen water bottles, rocks and other objects, had paintballs spatter their face shields, and been harassed with laser lights that can damage eyesight. He said there are still no excuses for police failing to live up to the organization’s standards, and some conduct concerns have been referred to an independent review and the bureau’s professional standards commission.

Legacy and new prominence
The Youth Liberation Front, from early on, has favored secrecy. The group’s leadership appears to embrace the radical Northwest legacy of the “black bloc” whose acts of vandalism roiled the 1999 Seattle protests during a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

The group launched a Twitter account in May 2018, and gained more prominence in September of 2019 as its members helped organize a walk out of Portland high school students to draw attention to climate change.

The next month, three of the leaders — two young men and a young woman — spoke anonymously in a podcast produced by It’s Going Down, a “digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist … anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements.”

In the podcast they talked about how they brought 250 masks to a September climate march, where they helped persuade peers — skittish about identifying with anarchists, black bloc and the anti-fascist movement — to shield their identities and join their fight.

“There are a lot of youth … who have the idea of … anti-capitalism, anti-racism already in their mind,” said an organizer. “But the idea of like Antifa, the idea of masking up is what scares them away … What we did with the climate strike is let them know that we don’t do this to be intimidating or threatening. We do it to protect ourselves and show solidarity.”

By the time Portland joined in the nationwide protests against George Floyd, the Youth Liberation Front was adept at mobilizing its supporters. But as its social media following grew, as did its reputation, it drew new scrutiny from within the activist community.

“Lots of folks have been reaching out concerned that we’re putting our majority white voices over POC (people of color) organizers that have been doing this work longer than us all,” said a June 7 post on the group’s Facebook page. “I apologize for the lack of communication and transparency on our part, and there is really not an excuse … all we can do is learn from mistakes and the criticisms from the community, and grow as people.”

The group did not respond to an email request from The Seattle Times for an interview.

A ‘Night of Rage’
In Portland, the evening of July 7 was billed in a Pacific Northwest Liberation Front Facebook post and tweet as a “Night of Rage for Summer Taylor,” a solidarity vigil in front of the Justice Center .

Taylor, 24, who was drawn to work at a veterinary clinic by a love of animals, was killed during a protest in Seattle earlier this month by a man who maneuvered his car onto a closed stretch of Interstate 5, drove around barriers and barreled into demonstrators. Another person was seriously injured.

The driver, Dawit Kelete, is charged with vehicular homicide, vehicular assault and reckless driving. He told jail officials he was withdrawing from Percocet and struggled with “untreated addictions.”

The protest of July 7 unfolded in an uneasy mix of suspicion and reflection.

Several of the early speakers got a cool reception from some of those gathered near the Justice Center. They hadn’t been to some of the earlier downtown protests, and were thought to be trying to tamp down the militancy of the movement, several protesters told a reporter.

In a nearby park, people gathered around a circle of candles lit in memory of the lost life. There was a moment of silence as a banner was held up that declared “Rest in Power in Summer Taylor.”

Then, some of the protesters picked up a familiar refrain “ACAB” — or All Cops are Bastards — and another that linked Mayor Wheeler’s name to an obscenity.

A woman opted out of the chants. “It’s not about Ted Wheeler. It’s not about the police. That’s not the reality of what happened to Summer Taylor.”

About 15 minutes before midnight, federal law enforcement officials made a brief appearance, firing two flash bangs, then retreating into a building. The crowd reacted like someone had poked a stick into a beehive, hurling insults that would continue deep into the night.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @hbernton.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... -protests/

Many more photos at link. Most seem to be about arson & vandalism, funny, that. But no police violence.(Let the pictures tell the story you really want conveyed).

"The kids are all right." Ya gotta start somewhere, this is a spark.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 07, 2020 4:52 pm

Political Prisoners: “Say Their Names”
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 06 Aug 2020

Image

Political Prisoners: “Say Their Names”

Unless folks are under the delusion that victory over the “fascists” is imminent, the condition of political prisoners should be a deeply personal, as well as political, concern to all activists.

“Movement activists of today will inevitably become the political prisoners of tomorrow.”

It has become a righteous ritual: the recitation of the names of those whose lives were snatched away by the armed agents of the U.S. state. Mass movements were assembled around the names Oscar Grant (2009) ,Trayvon Martin (2012) and Michael Brown (2014), prompting women of the movement to launch the #SayHerName campaign in 2014, to “lift up” the stories of Black women victims of police violence, “who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police.”

The ancient ritual of “pouring out” libations on the ground to memorialize the beloved dead was popularized by Boyz II Men and Tupac Shakur in the Nineties, and has long been incorporated in formal and informal recognition of the deceased heroes and heroines of the Black liberation struggle.

But what of the scores of political prisoners that the U.S. state has condemned to a social death in the world’s largest gulag? These men and women still struggle under the most hellish conditions against the same enemies of humanity that hundreds of thousands rallied against in the George Floyd mobilizations. “Free Huey,” “Free Bobby” and “Free Angela” were once rallying cries that energized millions. But seldom are political prisoners’ names shouted during today’s mobilizations against the murderous U.S. mass incarceration state or the global imperialist killing machine. Who is “lifting up” their stories and telling a new generation “who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police” and jailors?

“’Free Huey,’ ‘Free Bobby’ and ‘Free Angela’ were once rallying cries that energized millions.”

This is a grave political error, not an oversight. Movement activists of today will inevitably become the political prisoners of tomorrow. Some have already been sentenced to long terms in prison for alleged “crimes” in Ferguson and Baltimore during the rebellions of 2014-15, and agents of the state have doubtless drawn up lists of “Black Identity Extremists” (whatever the current official categorization) and their non-Black allies, for surveillance and arrest when the political time is right. Others have died mysteriously. Unless folks are under the delusion that victory over the “fascists” is imminent, the condition of political prisoners should be a deeply personal, as well as political, concern to all activists and their families and friends. The cage doors will clang shut for many of us before this struggle is over, in addition to all the libations that will be poured for the dead.

Neglect of our political prisoners exposes a discontinuity in the Black Liberation Movement, revealed in the shouting of “orphan” slogans, whose political ancestors seem unknown to the sloganizers. The men and women that fought for Black community control of the police and self-determination for all peoples half a century ago are Malcolm’s children, and therefore the political grandfathers and mothers of today’s George Floyd protest organizers. Whenever marchers chant, “Whose Streets? – OUR Streets!” or some variation on that theme, they are building on the struggles of a previous generation of fighters, some of them in their 80s and still locked up. Say their names, goddamit!

If you need help finding these still living, breathing, fighting political ancestors, the Jericho Movement has a list:

Abdul Azeez
Mumia Abu Jamal
Sundiata Acoli
Imam Jamil Al-Amin aka H. Rap Brown
Jalil Muntaqim
Joseph Bowen
Veronza Bowers
Kojo Bomani Sababu
Fred “Muhammad” Burton
Byron Chubbuck Shane (Oso Blanco)
Bill Dunne
Romain “Chip” Fitzgerald
David Gilbert
Jeremy Hammond
Alvaro Luna Hernandez
Hanif Shabbazz Bey
Kamau Sadiki
Larry Hoover
Abdullah Malik Ka’bah aka Jeff Fort
Maumin Khabir
Jaan Karl Laaman
Ruchell Cinque Magee
Malik Smith
Marius Mason
Ed Poindexter
Rev. Joy Powell, community activist
Mutulu Shakur
Russell Maroon Shoats

Although the bulk of the Jericho Movement list are former Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army members, there are also Republic of New Africa activists; the former SNCC leader once known as H. Rap Brown; surviving members of the Virgin Island 5; a community organizer serving life plus 16 years -- the lone woman on the Jericho list; Native American and Chicano freedom fighters; and class war, anti-imperialist and anarchist political prisoners – enough still-living political ancestors to engage the voices of all the social sectors that have been mobilized around George Floyd’s death and the deepening crises of the capitalist imperial order.

“Black August” is the month when genuinely “woke” activists redouble their efforts to free our political prisoners – for all of our sakes, and for the continuity of our struggle. The Black Is Back Coalition is therefore dedicating its annual conference, August 15 and 16, to the fallen and imprisoned. As the Call to Conference states:

“If today’s resistance appears unusual it is only because the U.S. has succeeded in hiding evidence of our anti-colonial struggle in the 1960s when, unlike the movement of this era, protest achieved a revolutionary character.

“During that time courageous men and women boldly stepped forward, sometimes with arms in hand, to challenge the cruelest and most powerful opponent of our freedom, the hegemon that bestrode the world of poverty and broken dreams it had created.”

Half a century later, the carceral state refuses to set these aged freedom fighters loose. The Black Is Back Coalition is honored to Say Their Names.

Go to t
Political Prisoners: “Say Their Names”
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 06 Aug 2020

Image

Political Prisoners: “Say Their Names”

Unless folks are under the delusion that victory over the “fascists” is imminent, the condition of political prisoners should be a deeply personal, as well as political, concern to all activists.

“Movement activists of today will inevitably become the political prisoners of tomorrow.”

It has become a righteous ritual: the recitation of the names of those whose lives were snatched away by the armed agents of the U.S. state. Mass movements were assembled around the names Oscar Grant (2009) ,Trayvon Martin (2012) and Michael Brown (2014), prompting women of the movement to launch the #SayHerName campaign in 2014, to “lift up” the stories of Black women victims of police violence, “who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police.”

The ancient ritual of “pouring out” libations on the ground to memorialize the beloved dead was popularized by Boyz II Men and Tupac Shakur in the Nineties, and has long been incorporated in formal and informal recognition of the deceased heroes and heroines of the Black liberation struggle.

But what of the scores of political prisoners that the U.S. state has condemned to a social death in the world’s largest gulag? These men and women still struggle under the most hellish conditions against the same enemies of humanity that hundreds of thousands rallied against in the George Floyd mobilizations. “Free Huey,” “Free Bobby” and “Free Angela” were once rallying cries that energized millions. But seldom are political prisoners’ names shouted during today’s mobilizations against the murderous U.S. mass incarceration state or the global imperialist killing machine. Who is “lifting up” their stories and telling a new generation “who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police” and jailors?

“’Free Huey,’ ‘Free Bobby’ and ‘Free Angela’ were once rallying cries that energized millions.”

This is a grave political error, not an oversight. Movement activists of today will inevitably become the political prisoners of tomorrow. Some have already been sentenced to long terms in prison for alleged “crimes” in Ferguson and Baltimore during the rebellions of 2014-15, and agents of the state have doubtless drawn up lists of “Black Identity Extremists” (whatever the current official categorization) and their non-Black allies, for surveillance and arrest when the political time is right. Others have died mysteriously. Unless folks are under the delusion that victory over the “fascists” is imminent, the condition of political prisoners should be a deeply personal, as well as political, concern to all activists and their families and friends. The cage doors will clang shut for many of us before this struggle is over, in addition to all the libations that will be poured for the dead.

Neglect of our political prisoners exposes a discontinuity in the Black Liberation Movement, revealed in the shouting of “orphan” slogans, whose political ancestors seem unknown to the sloganizers. The men and women that fought for Black community control of the police and self-determination for all peoples half a century ago are Malcolm’s children, and therefore the political grandfathers and mothers of today’s George Floyd protest organizers. Whenever marchers chant, “Whose Streets? – OUR Streets!” or some variation on that theme, they are building on the struggles of a previous generation of fighters, some of them in their 80s and still locked up. Say their names, goddamit!

If you need help finding these still living, breathing, fighting political ancestors, the Jericho Movement has a list:

Abdul Azeez
Mumia Abu Jamal
Sundiata Acoli
Imam Jamil Al-Amin aka H. Rap Brown
Jalil Muntaqim
Joseph Bowen
Veronza Bowers
Kojo Bomani Sababu
Fred “Muhammad” Burton
Byron Chubbuck Shane (Oso Blanco)
Bill Dunne
Romain “Chip” Fitzgerald
David Gilbert
Jeremy Hammond
Alvaro Luna Hernandez
Hanif Shabbazz Bey
Kamau Sadiki
Larry Hoover
Abdullah Malik Ka’bah aka Jeff Fort
Maumin Khabir
Jaan Karl Laaman
Ruchell Cinque Magee
Malik Smith
Marius Mason
Ed Poindexter
Rev. Joy Powell, community activist
Mutulu Shakur
Russell Maroon Shoats

Although the bulk of the Jericho Movement list are former Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army members, there are also Republic of New Africa activists; the former SNCC leader once known as H. Rap Brown; surviving members of the Virgin Island 5; a community organizer serving life plus 16 years -- the lone woman on the Jericho list; Native American and Chicano freedom fighters; and class war, anti-imperialist and anarchist political prisoners – enough still-living political ancestors to engage the voices of all the social sectors that have been mobilized around George Floyd’s death and the deepening crises of the capitalist imperial order.

“Black August” is the month when genuinely “woke” activists redouble their efforts to free our political prisoners – for all of our sakes, and for the continuity of our struggle. The Black Is Back Coalition is therefore dedicating its annual conference, August 15 and 16, to the fallen and imprisoned. As the Call to Conference states:

“If today’s resistance appears unusual it is only because the U.S. has succeeded in hiding evidence of our anti-colonial struggle in the 1960s when, unlike the movement of this era, protest achieved a revolutionary character.

“During that time courageous men and women boldly stepped forward, sometimes with arms in hand, to challenge the cruelest and most powerful opponent of our freedom, the hegemon that bestrode the world of poverty and broken dreams it had created.”

Half a century later, the carceral state refuses to set these aged freedom fighters loose. The Black Is Back Coalition is honored to Say Their Names.

Go to BlackIsBackCoalition.org to see how you can participate.

Power to the People!

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

Free All Political Prisoners

https://www.blackagendareport.com/polit ... eir-nameso see how you can participate.

Power to the People!

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

Free All Political Prisoners

https://www.blackagendareport.com/polit ... heir-names
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:46 pm

Chicago is Dystopian Police State of Racial Oppression and Class Rule
Paul Street 26 Aug 2020

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Chicago is Dystopian Police State of Racial Oppression and Class Rule

While her cops bust heads and kettle protesters, Chicago’s Black mayor Lori Lightfoot works behind the scenes with Trump’s “Operation Legend” agents to crack down on the inner city.

“This is What a Police State Looks Like”

Covid-era Chicago is a dystopian racist police state.

Two Saturdays ago, I headed down to the heart of historical Black Chicago on the South Side, to 45th and Indiana. I was looking for the two-thousand-person strong racial justice march that excited newscasters said was going to start at 47th and the Dan Ryan expressway (I-94 to non-Chicagoans) and make its way north to the downtown.

I stopped to check the march route on my phone across the street from the Chicago Police Department’s giant headquarters at 35th and Michigan. The building was surrounded by police in blue helmets and bullet-proof vests, heads bowed over their own smart phones.

A gaunt old Black man wearing a white beret rode up to me on a blue ten-speed bicycle. He spoke on what he called “the situation.” He talked about how differently COVID-19 is impacting the city’s neighborhoods by race and class. I told him about a pre-covid (2019) study showing that people live thirty years longer in the wealthy Near North Side neighborhood of Streeterville than they do in the deeply impoverished and 99% Black South Side neighborhood of Englewood. “Of course they do,” he said: “don’t need no study to show that!”

He found it amusing that the cops were bunched up by race: “They can’t even talk to each other! Go over to Wabash, it’s nothing but white cops over there.”

“The building was surrounded by police in blue helmets and bullet-proof vests, heads bowed over their own smart phones.”

Continuing south, I took a turn west on 43rd Street and happened by chance on a phalanx of all-white state police in full riot gear guarding a train bridge. There wasn’t a protester in sight, just me on a city bike, getting stared down by fifty downstate storm troopers with batons held crosswise above their knees. My mind flashed back to Jack London’s chilling dystopian novel The Iron Heel.

I found and joined the march. It was being led by a Black self-described rabbi who had no interest in fighting police. It was nowhere close to two thousand people. It was a hundred and fifty at most, by my count. It was surrounded front, back, and on both sides by the militarized police state, a police helicopter whirring overhead.

We said the usual chants and stopped every block or two to circle up for a “mike-check” to hear dramatic performances from the rabbi and some of his brethren. A young Black man told the story of how his life was changed forever when Chicago police killed his brother.

The rabbi became irritated by the presence of radicals in his midst, one of whom, a tall Black man from the Revolutionary Communist Party, was stealing his thunder by speaking eloquently about the need to de-fund the racist police state and then to radically confront the reigning system of race and class oppression. “Revolution, nothing less,” this leader said.

One of our chants was an old stand-by: “This what democracy looks like.” It felt ironic to say. The march was lined with gendarmes. Every step was hemmed in by cops on bikes. A police helicopter buzzed above, filming every move, like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four or Fahrenheit 451. Cops in SUVs with blue lights flashing rolled ahead and behind. Paddy wagons followed in case mass arrests were indicated. Big city Streets and Sanitation trucks blocked intersections east and west. The total city and state police deployment must have tripled the size of the march crowd.

“This,” I said to one my fellow marchers, “is what a police state looks like.”

“Every step was hemmed in by cops on bikes.”

Chicago spends more than $1.7 billion, nearly 15 percent of its total budget on a vast police force that is all about keeping the city safe for affluent whites for whom “shelter in place” has meant working from pleasant homes in good paying jobs with gold-plated insurance plans in comfortable neighborhoods with nice public parks and full-service grocery stores while poor Black people sink into escalated poverty, illness, and misery in hyper-segregated ghettoes of despair. The more the police arrest and incarcerate, the worse the life chances of young Black and brown people become in the neoliberal racist dystopia. The more their life chances are damaged, the more susceptible they are to engagement in illegal activities and thus to reincarceration after being released from prison. It’s a self-fulfilling vicious circle.

I walked a block ahead of the march after the communists left and the rabbi saw fit to smear them to his followers. As the march and its oversized police state escort made its way north into the gentrified Near South Side, I saw concerned white professional s faces in sidewalk taverns, coffee shops, and restaurants. They looked at the oncoming scene with contempt, as if to say, “what is this foolish nonsense about?” I was reminded of the Earth-colonizing aliens cloaked as urban professionals and businessmen in John Carpenter’s classic left- wing science fiction horror movie They Live.

I saw a white couple hurry into their renovated loft building, the husband saying “quick, honey, let’s get inside.” I felt bad for them. It was a peaceful march surrounded on every side by gendarmes. It had nothing to do with the late-night and early morning downtown looting conducted by organized gangs six days before. “Why are you in riot gear?” we had chanted one mile south, “I don’t see no riot here.”

The Financial District: “Whose Streets?”

This all occurred during the early afternoon. I had to get home (in the South Loop) and take care of some household matters. I left the march at Michigan and Roosevelt Road, where the rabbi was claiming holiness for letting a man in a wheelchair speak (a bit of able-ism that I found offensive). This was just a few blocks west of where Mayor Lori Lightfoot had recently been forced (by young Black and Latinx protesters) to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus, who kicked off Europe’s racist genocide in the New World.

I did not anticipate another confrontation with the police state that day. I was wrong.

After dinner, the whirring blades of the police helicopter above the statue of Ceres, the Roman Goddess of Grain, atop the Chicago Board of Trade building, reminded me that there had been another Saturday protest – a late afternoon march in the Loop led by young Black and Latinx activists calling for the de-funding of Chicago’s police state and the removal of Donald Trump’s nativist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from Chicago. These were the same kids who had forced the removal of the Columbus monument.

By the helicopter’s location, I placed the protesters in the downtown financial district. I Googled up “protests in Chicago today” and was soon looking at online images from the very chopper I could see hovering above the Loop from my front window. Peering down into the streets below the faceless Ceres through my computer screen, I could see that things had gone bad. Barely discernible whitish-colored figures that looked like tiny swimming larva through the helicopter lens could be seen running, turning down streets, coalescing, merging, and breaking up again. It was very Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Blade Runner, and Escape From New York.

It was obvious that a confrontation was underway . I donned my running shoes and headed north. At Dearborn and Adams, police were ubiquitous, blue lights and red ambulance lights coloring whole blocks. “What’s going on?” I asked an angry gendarme guarding an intersection. “Mass arrests,” he growled through a riot shield, “get out of here.”

“Police were ubiquitous, blue lights and red ambulance lights coloring whole blocks.”

I ran one block north and came down LaSalle Street, Chicago’s Wall Street. A young Latino told me what had just gone down. The kids had been trapped, hemmed in with nowhere to escape. They had been “kettled” – a police tactic where officers surround demonstrators before making mass arrests.

The young man was bleeding from police baton hits to his left leg and right arm. His skin burned from pepper spray. He was hoping to get his bike back from the police.

It was a major counter-offensive by the CPD. They’d been waiting for an opportunity to crack down ever since they got humiliated by youthful protesters at the recently amputated Columbus monument – and by the looters who had swarmed the downtown area the previous Sunday night. And they relished it.

By the time I got there, young Black and Latinx Chicagoans were being thrown in the backs of paddy wagons. Protesters’ bikes were heaped in two mangled piles on LaSalle.

A white police officer was seen using a marker to draw a hammer and sickle on the arm of a young Black arrestee. That cop is likely informed on current events by white-nationalist FOX News, where Trump’s Attorney General William Barr recently called Black Lives Matter activists “Bolsheviks”

A white-shirt police commander picked up his megaphone and said, “Whose streets?” This elicited loud laughter and raised fists from his fellow city gendarmes.

As readers surely know, one of social justice activists’ favorite chants is “Whose Streets? Our Streets!”

The commander was telling us that the armed force of the state, with its monopoly on legal violence, owns the city. I reminded this officer that Chicago is owned by the big financial institutions that loom over LaSalle Street and the rest of the Loop. “You work for them,” I told him: “These streets belong to Bank of America, Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, US Bank and Wells Fargo. That’s who you serve and protect.” He didn’t seem to disagree.

Real Chicagoans Don’t Protest

A tall, muscular, and bald white man in expensive casual threads (and no mask) came up close to scream the following at me and some young Black onlookers: “none of you people are from Chicago!” He explained that “real Chicagoans don’t protest. Only outside agitators do.”

I guess he never heard of the Chicago Eight Hour Movement, The Great Chicago Labor Upheaval of 1877, the Haymarket Martyrs, the Pullman Strike, the 1905 Teamsters Strike, the Stockyards Labor Council, the Unemployed Councils, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (whose slogan was “Black and white, unite and fight”), the Memorial Day Massacre, the Chicago Freedom Movement, the Black Panthers, the Chicago Teachers Union, and the Black uprising that forced out Rahm Emanuel in the wake of the Laquan McDonald killing.

He demanded to know where I grew up, what schools I attended. As I started to answer, taking the bait, his wife snarled and aimed a can of Mace at my face.

White Amerikaner Trumpenvolk fascists are not just a rural, suburban, and exurban phenomenon. We have them in big blue (Democratic) cities too, especially in neighborhoods full of white cops like Mount Greenwood, the far Southwest Side home to many of the comparatively small number of Chicago voting precincts that went Trump in 2016.

Fascism Has Many Colors

They are aided and abetted by Chicago’s technically Black mayor Lori Lightfoot. Lightfoot is having nothing to do with calls to defund the police as she works behind the scenes with Trump’s “Operation Legend” agents to crack down on the inner city under the false pretext that Trump cares about Black-on-Black bloodshed.

A bunch of Lakefront Liberals thought that Lori was a progressive. How foolish of them. Lightfoot was a corporate lawyer who served white power by sitting on police review boards to side with racist cops under the One Percent mayoralties of Richard Daley II and Rahm Emanuel. Liberals are just perpetually identity-bamboozled by corporatist agents of class rule and racial oppression.

Fascism has many different colors: white, orange, blue, brown, and black. We must fight them all. The alternative is the dystopian right-wing police state that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us about before his assassination (or execution), which came one year and a half before the metropolitan and FBI police-state execution of the great young Black Panther Fred Hampton on the West Side of Chicago.

A Statue Recommendation

Fred Hampton – there’s another Chicagoan who doesn’t exist in metropolitan white nationalism’s official memory chambers. Earlier this summer, I attended a press conference in which local reporters asked young Black activists what they’d like to see instead of a statue of Christopher Columbus at Roosevelt Road and Columbus Avenue. After some silence, I blurted out “how about a statue of Fred Hampton?” the reporters had the deer-in-the headlights look. They’d never heard of him. The activists knew who Fred Hampton was and readily endorsed the recommendation.

Which reminds me: this can’t be released soon enough: “Judas and the Black Messiah.” I hope the rabbi gets to see it. It might help him with his problem with Marxists.

Peaceful Protest is Failing

Meanwhile, just 50 miles north, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, another one of the nation’s thousands of local racist police states paralyzed the young Black man Jacob Blake with seven vicious, totally unnecessary, and criminal shots in the back . The scenes of the predictable result, including significant rioting, have been positively dystopian as the National Guard arrives. I am guessing they’ll bring the usual detachment of Black Hawk Attack Helicopters, named after the great Sauk warrior, Black Hawk, whose people were butchered and ethnically cleansed from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin by white “setters” in the early 1830s.

The young man’s uncle has called for “peaceful protest” – the usual official statement from family members of police brutality victims. Good luck with that. Tens of millions have protested peacefully from coast to coast (in more than 2000 U.S. cities and towns) since after the murder of Breonna Taylor and the eight-minute lynching of George Floyd. The Amerikaner gendarmes rolled out the tear gas (a technically illegal agent of chemical warfare), “impact munitions,” pepper spray (also illegal), sound cannons (capable of piercing eardrums), kettling, paddy wagons, and batons from sea to shining sea. Racist pigs continue to murder and maim Black people. They just can’t stop themselves.

Mass peaceful protest has not made Amerikaners think that Black lives matter. It just hasn’t.

The fascist-racist police state must be de-funded and disarmed in Red State and Blue State America, in small red towns and big blue cities, from coast to coast.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/chica ... class-rule
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sun Aug 30, 2020 11:42 am

[img]https://orinocotribune.com/wp-content/u ... 45.jpg[img]

Police Told Right-Wing Kenosha Killer “We Appreciate You” Just Before Deadly Shootings
August 27, 2020
Coordination between police and far-right groups is far from abnormal but as yesterday’s killings show, it is becoming much more dangerous.

By Alan Macleod – Aug 26, 2020

Three people were shot and two died last night in Keshona, Wis, as right-wing militias hit the streets, shooting demonstrators protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday. After two nights of angry demonstrations, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who originally described the event as a “merciless” act of police cruelty, called in the National Guard and declared a state of emergency. However, along with the National Guard came large numbers of right-wing militia groups, existing relatively harmoniously with law enforcement. Far-right news organizations and websites had earlier signal boosted the Kenosha Guard militia’s call for reinforcements to come to “protect lives and property.”

Last night’s killings were filmed and immediately posted on social media. In one video, protesters fight with an armed militiaman, who fires at three people at point blank range, killing two. He then hurries from the scene, “repeating “I just killed someone,” retreating back towards police lines, still carrying his rifle. Even as the crowd shout to the police that the killer is coming towards them, they ignore him, instead instructing the protesters to get out of the way.
Kenosha killer walks right up to police. People are yelling, loudly at cops that he shot someone. Police ignore him. 6 vehicles full of police ignore him. Despite fact he has a long gun. Despite fact he has hands up. Despite fact cops know people have just been shot. https://t.co/qV3dlJ1dxM

— Arun Gupta Flatten the Ruling Class (@arunindy) August 26, 2020
The shooter has been widely identified as a 17-year-old boy. From his public Facebook page, it is clear that he idolizes the police, his profile picture being a “Blue Lives Matter” logo with him in the center, holding a rifle. Virtually every post he made is about either the police or guns. As of Wednesday morning, he is still at large. Footage taken earlier in the night shows the teenager bragging that he and his crew “don’t have non-lethal” ammunition with them.
This photo makes me want to make a very distasteful trauma-joke about school shooters so instead I’m gonna log off for real. pic.twitter.com/6qDEjGZQp1

— leafblower zaddy 🌬☂️🏳️‍🌈 (@abolishICE___) August 26, 2020
Another video shows them fraternizing with heavily militarized police, who offer them water and tell him “we appreciate you guys, we really do,” evidence which might explain why he was neither shot nor even arrested after killing two people right in front of dozens of law enforcement officers.
Kyle Rittenhouse is from Antioch, Illinois, He would be considered an outside agitator because he lives 30 minutes from Kenosha, WI. With his mom. #KenoshaShooting #MorningJoe pic.twitter.com/xTwbUJIzGe

— THE CONNET (@THEAlleyeceeing) August 26, 2020

Speaking about the shooting, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes said that “we can’t even act surprised that this happened.” Barnes said that it had become normal to see heavily armed militia in public, adding,

In many instances, these people have been led on by various conspiracy theories that have ruminated on the internet, and these people are demanding to have their country back. And to assume that nothing bad is going to happen, to assume that these people are up to — or, have the most fine intentions, is completely ridiculous.”
Wow. Black shop owner in #Kenosha describes the moment he gave shelter to #JacobBlake protesters after armed right wing "militia" showed up in 10-15 pickup trucks + opened fire on activistspic.twitter.com/IiANxV0f2b

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) August 26, 2020
Not an isolated incident

Coordination between police and far-right groups is far from abnormal. During the George Floyd protests, Oregon police associated with groups such as the Proud Boys, video showing one officer asking the group to hide in a building because they were about to start gassing protesters, but to do it “discreetly,” as they did not want to be seen as “playing favorites.” Another Oregon officer was caught on camera flashing the “White Power” hand gesture at right-wing counter demonstrators.

In June, a Seattle man drove his car at high speed into anti-racist protesters, opening fire at the crowd. He then calmly leaves his vehicle and walks over to police lines, where they shield him, turning their backs on the armed killer to face the crowd. That they appeared totally unconcerned at this is a sign of how confident they were that they were in no danger. As activist news outlet It’s Going Down noted, “Such a relationship allows the police to use far-right groups as an auxiliary force against social movements.”

A study published last year by Injustice Watch found that 20 percent of police officers nationwide have shared egregiously racist material or content glorifying police violence against protesters on their public Facebook accounts. This figure rises to 40 percent of retired cops. Rarely is any action taken against officers sharing this content. On the other hand, a Massachusetts officer was recently fired for sharing a pro-Black Lives Matter social media post.

The shooting of Jacob Blake

The events of last night were sparked by an incident on Sunday, where an unarmed black man, Jacob Blake, was shot from point blank range in the back at least seven times by police officers, the shooting occurring in front of his friends and children. Miraculously, Blake survived but is now paralyzed after one bullet severed his spinal column. Blake’s father, also called Jacob, wept as he described the incident as “senseless attempted murder,” and said he had no faith that the police officers involved would be held to justice. The suspects are currently on administrative leave, a status which amounts to a paid vacation.
The shooting was denounced by a great number of human and civil rights groups. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, described it as a “disgusting act of police brutality.” “With each of the seven shots fired, police made their intent clear—they believed they had the right to kill an unarmed Black man for the crime of walking away from them,” said Jeffery Robinson, director of the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. Seeing as the teenage militiaman has not even been apprehended, it appears far-right groups might also be able to kill with impunity in Trump’s America.



Featured image: Police in riot gear clear a park during clashes with protesters outside the Kenosha County Courthouse late Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. David Goldman | AP

(Mint Press News)

https://orinocotribune.com/police-state ... shootings/

Like the man said, sometimes nothing for decades, sometimes decades in weeks. That knife cuts both ways. I have been disparaging the overall effect of these racist militias as they have lacked ruling class support, but even as we know the cops are ideologically in tune with these Nazis that they would openly support them, shamelessly on camera, is escalation. Is this what the bosses want? Hard to say but the answer must come soon.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 05, 2020 2:02 pm

Cops reject 'lesser-evilism'

Image
This year’s presidential election makes for an interesting natural experiment to test which group’s viewpoint is correct. One of the candidates, Joe Biden, is critical of officers who perpetrate unjustified shootings and beatings, and supportive of peaceful protests against overpolicing. But he says that “most cops are good, decent people.” He believes that the existing levels of police funding should be maintained. He does not believe that “qualified immunity” laws should be changed to allow for easier prosecution of police brutality. One of his most significant achievements as a senator was the 1994 crime bill, which provided federal funding for hiring new officers. He served in a presidential administration that, by the standards of presidential administrations, was exceptionally clean and law-abiding

The other candidate, Donald Trump, has a history of making racist comments about nonwhite people. (A new one was uncovered in a book published last month.) A number of those comments indicate a belief that predominately Black and Latino countries and communities are intrinsically undesirable places to live. He was accused—by the Nixon administration!—of systematically discriminating against Black tenants as a landlord. As a private citizen he fraternized with Mafia figures, worked closely with a convicted drug trafficker and a convicted racketeer, and sold apartments to an impressive number of organized crime leaders. He’s made supportive comments about a white supremacist rally, hired white nationalists in his administration, and defended a white member of a “militia” who recently shot three protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two. Two of the most notable chapters of his pre-presidential public life involved him making false accusations against Black people. He’s encouraged police officers to smash suspects’ heads against the sides of their cars, which is illegal. A number of his political advisers and associates have been convicted of crimes. A majority of voters believes that he, himself, has committed crimes in the past.

Which side are the police on? Do they favor the candidate who believes law enforcement basically means well, as long as it keeps working to “root out the bad apples” in police departments? Or the candidate with a record of supporting criminal behavior, extrajudicial violence, and racism—and of celebrating the bad apples?

The country’s largest municipal police union (the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York) picked the latter candidate; its leader, Patrick Lynch, spoke at the Republican convention. On Friday, the largest national police organization, the Fraternal Order of Police, announced that it was endorsing Trump on behalf of its 355,000 members as well.

The police say that they want members of minority communities to believe the officers patrolling their neighborhoods are motivated by the principle of upholding the law and that they do not, as a general rule, hold or condone racist beliefs. Those officers also keep choosing to endorse Donald Trump.

In his convention remarks, which were broadcast on a night during which Trump gave a campaign speech on the lawn of the White House, which is illegal, Lynch said that he and other officers “cannot afford” to have someone like Biden in office. What does it say about American policing if that’s actually true?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... trump.html
They may be stupid pigs easily swayed by superficial politics but they know the difference between immunity and the impunity which Trump encourages and they have always required as class enforcers.

Of the two capitalist parties the Republicans again are the more truthful, however vicious. Their's is the knife in the belly, the Democrats' the knife in the back.
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:30 pm

Sept 19: A Nationwide Day of Protest, and of Dialogue on Community Control of Police
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 10 Sep 2020

Image

Sept 19: A Nationwide Day of Protest, and of Dialogue on Community Control of Police

Community control puts us on the path to both defunding and abolishing the police – so why are many Black Lives Matter chapters withholding support?

The Black masses want justice, security and democracy (also known as “self-determination”) to be part of the equation.”

Despite the unprecedented wave of “Justice for George Floyd” protests that put more than 20 million people in the streets in every region of the nation in June, and the appearance of “Black Lives Matter” murals on the streets of Washington DC, New York City, Seattle, Oakland, Tulsa and other cities, police killings of Blacks have continued their grisly pace. Citing the subsequent murders of Trayford Pellerin in Lafayette, Louisiana, Miguel Vega in Chicago, Dijon Kizzee in Los Angeles, “the recent evidence of the murder of Daniel Prude at the hands of Rochester police and the continued denial of Justice for Breonna Taylor” in Louisville, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression is calling for a “national day of protests” on Saturday, September 19.

“Like the pandemic, these police shootings are raging unchecked,” said Alliance executive director Frank Chapman. “The powers that be, those in and out of the Trump Administration have no intention of conceding to the just demands of the people…. The only decisive action taken has been against peaceful protestors.”

“These police shootings are raging unchecked.”

Congress and the White House have offered nothing “except a uniform chorus condemning violence in the abstract instead of the racist violence being mercilessly imposed on Black people on a daily basis,” said Chapman, in a prepared statement. He denounced “Trump’s refusal to condemn racist vigilante violence while he eagerly exploits every opportunity to deploy DHS, U.S. Marshalls and federal troops against peaceful protestors. This is not only a disturbing indicator of how far down the road he has gone toward squashing with violence and terror the people’s right to protest, it is also a testament to his willingness to be a demagogue crying for law and order to win the election or undermine it.”

The people must keep up the pressure on September 19th, with the following demands:

* We demand that the cops who shot or murdered Breonna Taylor, Daniel Prude, Jacob Blake, Miguel Vega, and Trayford Pellerin be immediately arrested, charged and convicted.

* We demand the immediate withdrawal of federal agents and National Guard troops sent to our cities to brutalize protestors and terrorize our communities.

* We demand real police accountability through all-elected Civilian Police Accountability Councils (CPAC) establishing community control of the police, shifting police funding to essential public services like education, housing, and healthcare and regulating police to address the real demands for safety of the people.

“Keep up the pressure.”

The Alliance was first formed in the 1973 and was resurrected last year at a 1,000-strong national conference in Chicago, where grassroots organizations from more than 20 cities pledged to redouble their efforts to win community control of police. Among them was the Twin Cities Justice for Jamar Clark Coalition from Minneapolis-St. Paul, where a cop crushed the life out of George Floyd. Frank Chapman spoke to the Twin Cities coalition at the height of the protests, in June:

“You gotta give people definite, clearly defined objectives in terms of what are they fighting for. So when we demand community control of police, we are demanding…defund and demilitarize, as well…. We will control what the police do in our community; we will decide who polices our communities and how our communities are policed. That means we can also have a decisive voice in what the budget is.”

Chicago’s movement for community control of the cops is by far the most advanced in the nation, with at least 19 of 50 city council members pledged to pass CPAC, the Chicago Police Accountability Council with powers to appoint the police superintendent, create the department’s rules and regulations, appoint members of the police board that hear disciplinary case, and approve or reject contracts with police unions.

According to the pending Chicago legislation, the cops will be subordinate to community members elected to four-year terms, who must have at least two years of experience in “civil rights, activist and organizing groups” that protect the rights of people who have faced police brutality. Community members will also be eligible to be elected to the council if they have worked to protect “minorities, LGBTQ people, immigrants, Muslim communities, people with mental illness and people who are homeless.” However, people that have been employed in or have family members in law enforcement, worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and/or have any connections with an entity of city government would not be eligible to run for a seat on CPAC – which would pay the same salary as Chicago aldermen.

“When we demand community control of police, we are demanding…defund and demilitarize, as well.”

The keynote speaker at last year’s re-founding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression was Angela Davis, whose writings on abolition of prisons and police have inspired many Black Lives Matter activists. Professor Davis wholeheartedly supports community control of the police. Yet most of Black Lives Matter’s 14 U.S. chapters have failed to embrace community control, instead calling for “defunding” and “abolition” of the ccps.

Frank Chapman stresses that CPAC provides communities with the power to achieve all of their goals, including abolishing police as we have known them. As he explained to Black Agenda Report, this summer:

“All of the reforms being called for, including abolishing and defunding the police – reforms that directly affect the current existence of the police as outside occupiers of our communities -- are embedded in CPAC,” said Chapman. “CPAC is the way to ensuring these demands are met. CPAC puts the power of reform in the hands of communities through directly elected representatives. That’s community control. With community control, we decide the if, when, and how of policing – up to and including abolition. With community control, we can defund, demilitarize, and regulate the police out of existence. Communities can reimagine a world without police – but not without the power to do so themselves.”

Chapman is careful not to exacerbate any tensions between Black Lives Matter activists and proponents of community control of police, and his National Alliance is rigorously non-sectarian. It is our job at BAR, as activist journalists and political analysts, to point out the pitfalls of demands like “abolition” and “defunding” of the police, that do not directly empower the people. As I wrote in BAR on June 18:

“If anything has been learned from the past half century of Black reliance on Democratic Party politicians, it is that no lasting victories can be achieved without the transfer of control of public resources directly to the people. That was the meaning of “All Power to the People” when the phrase was coined, and must remain the goal of the movement, today.”

Local city councils are liable to agree to all kinds of things under the immediate pressure of massed, angry protesters and burning buildings, as we witnessed with the Minneapolis city council’s no longer operative vow to get rid of its police force. The difference between reformist demands and revolutionary (or “transformative”) demands, is that revolutionary/transformative demands diminish the power of the oppressor and his machinery of rule, while increasing the power of the people in concrete ways. No amount of promises or “woke”-sounding rhetoric from city councils that have always empowered the police to kill Black people at will, can satisfy the need for people’s power over the police.

“No lasting victories can be achieved without the transfer of control of public resources directly to the people.”

The police earn their salaries by killing Black and brown people and terrorizing our neighborhoods, whether the cops are fully-funded, or not. “Defunding” does not change the nature of policing, much less “abolish” it. Community control puts us on the path to both goals, if the people will it.

As I wrote back in June, the principled demand for community control should be expanded:

“Indeed, communities should control, not just the police, but much of the rest of their neighborhoods’ vital services and resources. The right to self-determination is not confined to the criminal justice system. Therefore, community control of police advocates would be in principled agreement with the Los Angeles Movement 4 Black Lives position : “The most impacted in our communities need to control the laws, institutions, and policies that are meant to serve us – from our schools to our local budgets, economies, and police department.”

In Chicago, the teachers union supports both community control of the police and community control of the schools. With community control as our demand, we win allies among those who also seek transformative change.

Black and brown people want power to improve their lives and throw off oppression – not gestures from the rulers, but permanent, institutional power. Our people also want -- and have a right to -- security in their homes and communities. But, for half a century Black Americans have been criminalized as a people by the Mass Black Incarceration Regime, starved of jobs, robbed of wealth and drowned in criminal-minded cultural products. Many of our people see the narcotics trade as the only accessible economy. Crime is an acute problem in Black America, a scourge created and nurtured by the same oppressors that inflict the punishments for those ensnared in their demonic trap.

Open-ended calls to “defund” and “abolish” the police often do not play well with the Black masses, who want justice, security and democracy (also known as “self-determination”) to be part of the equation. Community control of the police – or fully-resourced community self-policing, if that is what the people choose – can provide Black and brown communities with the power, rights and resources to rebuild the social structures that have been deliberately ravaged by the rulers. And it has already proven to play well in Chicago, the second largest concentration of Black people in the nation.

September 19 should be, not only a national day of protest, but the start of a dialogue among activists as to why so many Black Lives Matter chapters have withheld support from community control of the police, a demand that, in Frank Chapman’s words, “embodies” both “defunding” and “abolition” – a principled position that their best known living Icon, Angela Davis, enthusiastically supports.

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

https://www.blackagendareport.com/sept- ... rol-police
"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 Oct 03, 2020 1:26 pm

BLM leader gives cover to Proud Boys
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON OCTOBER 2, 2020 •

Image

Equating the Proud Boys with white supremacy has some serious limitations. That’s because they actually have black members and they don’t campaign against black people per se. Despite their denials, however, they associate with white supremacists. But to simply dismiss the danger they pose as being that of white supremacy in the sense of directly attacking black people for being black is a serious mistake.

In fact, the main danger they pose is more general – attacking those who stand up against not only white supremacy but against the far right in general. That’s what became most clear in this bellingcat expose of the Patriot Coalition on Oregon. Behind all their talk about simply defending themselves was the talk about assaulting left wing activists, white and black alike.

Equating the Proud Boys with white supremacy, and seeing white supremacy in isolation and as meaning simply assaulting or discriminating against black people simply for being black, led to what amounts to a betrayal on the part of a reputed Black Lives Matter leader in Salt Lake City. It was difficult to clearly make out the name, but it seems to be Jacarri Kelly, who bills herself as the president of BLM, Utah. She joined a joint press conference with some local Proud Boys leaders in order to give credibility to their claim that they are not white supremacists. By doing so, she helps make the “respectable”.

Image
Proud Boys and other fascists. They are a threat to us all.

What they are is patriotic overt xenophobes who see “Western culture” as the be all and end all. As one Proud Boys representative commented in this news report, “chauvinism should be understood as patriotism”. They are also fascists who believe in and carry out physical assaults against left wing protesters of all colors.

It is a disgrace that anybody who is really against racism and white supremacy would in any way give cover to these dangerous fascists who are a threat to everybody on the left and to all class fighters. It really shows the need for a clear general program as well as for a real organization with a democratically elected leadership. To those who say that white people have no right to criticize the likes of Jacarri Kelly, I say: If somebody gives cover to these fascists who pose a direct physical threat to all socialists and class fighters, then we have not only every right but a responsibility to criticize them.

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/10/02 ... roud-boys/

Has it been verified that this woman was actually a BLM leader? If so how did she become a leader? And how many of these shitheads are there anyway?

Edit: Only estimate I've seen is 6K. Make it 10K. These guys a Small Change.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by solidgold » Sun Oct 04, 2020 12:42 am

blindpig wrote:
Sat Oct 03, 2020 1:26 pm
BLM leader gives cover to Proud Boys
BY OAKLANDSOCIALIST ON OCTOBER 2, 2020 •

Image

Equating the Proud Boys with white supremacy has some serious limitations. That’s because they actually have black members and they don’t campaign against black people per se. Despite their denials, however, they associate with white supremacists. But to simply dismiss the danger they pose as being that of white supremacy in the sense of directly attacking black people for being black is a serious mistake.

In fact, the main danger they pose is more general – attacking those who stand up against not only white supremacy but against the far right in general. That’s what became most clear in this bellingcat expose of the Patriot Coalition on Oregon. Behind all their talk about simply defending themselves was the talk about assaulting left wing activists, white and black alike.

Equating the Proud Boys with white supremacy, and seeing white supremacy in isolation and as meaning simply assaulting or discriminating against black people simply for being black, led to what amounts to a betrayal on the part of a reputed Black Lives Matter leader in Salt Lake City. It was difficult to clearly make out the name, but it seems to be Jacarri Kelly, who bills herself as the president of BLM, Utah. She joined a joint press conference with some local Proud Boys leaders in order to give credibility to their claim that they are not white supremacists. By doing so, she helps make the “respectable”.

Image
Proud Boys and other fascists. They are a threat to us all.

What they are is patriotic overt xenophobes who see “Western culture” as the be all and end all. As one Proud Boys representative commented in this news report, “chauvinism should be understood as patriotism”. They are also fascists who believe in and carry out physical assaults against left wing protesters of all colors.

It is a disgrace that anybody who is really against racism and white supremacy would in any way give cover to these dangerous fascists who are a threat to everybody on the left and to all class fighters. It really shows the need for a clear general program as well as for a real organization with a democratically elected leadership. To those who say that white people have no right to criticize the likes of Jacarri Kelly, I say: If somebody gives cover to these fascists who pose a direct physical threat to all socialists and class fighters, then we have not only every right but a responsibility to criticize them.

https://oaklandsocialist.com/2020/10/02 ... roud-boys/

Has it been verified that this woman was actually a BLM leader? If so how did she become a leader? And how many of these shitheads are there anyway?

Edit: Only estimate I've seen is 6K. Make it 10K. These guys a Small Change.
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.

Proud Boys on the other hand are ruthlessly consistent. Liberals want to paint them as the KKK to avoid having to reckon with how similar philosophically they are.

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