#abolition
« ensuite, après ces premiers moments de révélation ou de radicalisation, la gauche peut et doit présenter une alternative claire. Nous avons besoin d'une analyse claire de la structure des classes et d'une déclaration audacieuse et définitive selon laquelle votre ennemi, ce sont les milliardaires et les patrons, plutôt qu'une cabale nébuleuse ou un groupe que la droite veut désigner comme bouc émissaire. C'est essentiel pour combattre le fascisme et le conspirationnisme et pour aider les gens à voir le monde clairement. En même temps, ces conversations ultérieures montrent aux gens que la gauche a de vraies solutions à ce problème des milliardaires. Renforcer le pouvoir de la classe ouvrière, créer des syndicats sur le lieu de travail et avec nos voisins, développer des coopératives de travailleurs et s'organiser pour dépasser le capitalisme sont de vraies réponses, par opposition à la désignation de boucs émissaires ou à l'orientation des gens vers des rassemblements secrets imaginaires de groupes qui n'existent pas.»
#conspirationisme #ElonMusk #gauche #abolition #organize #anticapitalisme #antisémitisme
The Conspiracy is Capitalism
Elon Musk, transphobia and antisemitism, and moving people from conspiracy to class struggle
par @joshuaphilll
I saw a tiktok earlier today talking about how the kubotan is illegal to carry in Australia without a "valid reason", and how "self defence" isn't seen by the police as a valid reason.
I shared in the comments how I carry one, and tell the cops that it's not a weapon, it's a tool for smashing a car window if I get into an accident and need to climb out of my car.
The sheer number of responses that I've gotten to the comment that say something along the lines of "the cops aren't stupid, they know it's not for a car window".
I take classes with policing students. Trust me, they are not clever, not competent, and they are lazy.
This weird faith people have in cops has to stop.
#AbolishPolice #Abolition #AbolishPrisons #anarchism #CommunityNotCops
Nashville broke ground on their own cop city this morning. An 800 acre project costing an estimated $415M. MALETA (Multi-Agency Law Enforcement Training Academy) will include a shooting range, dorms, a mock city for training, and the grounds will host a variety of administrative buildings. Basically every LEO department in the state - from state police, DOC, highway patrol, and the Tennessee branch of Department of Homeland Security will use this site.
CFP: Exploring Carceral Food Systems: Tensions, Experiences and Possibilities
Appel à contributions: Explorer les systèmes alimentaires carcéraux : tensions,
expériences et possibilités
Please send a 250-word maximum paper abstract to guest editors/ Veuillez envoyer un résumé de 250 mots maximum aux éditrices invitées Ami Stearns (astearns@coastal.edu) & Amanda Wilson (awilson@ustpaul.ca) by Nov 1st, 2023
#Carceral #PrisonFood #Agriculture #FoodJustice #PrisonJustice #Abolition #Food
Anarchists don’t have to agree on a best way of doing things or to find single answers to questions about the future. Anarchism won’t come to pass when enough people agree on how to live anarchically but rather when enough people feel the price for any other way of life is too high, too bloody. It’s not a single best way of doing things, it’s what’s left when the cops are gone. It’s what free people can build on that foundation.
#Anarchism #Anarchy #Abolition #PoliceAbolition #TheAnarchistLibrary
Something I'm working on today: We have to think of detainees charged with abortion-related crimes as political detainees precisely because “the personal is political,” that abortion and bodily autonomy are political issues. The struggle for the legalization of abortion is part and parcel to any program of police and prison abolition in the Philippines.
HEY ALL - looking for newsfeed recommendations on here. Have finally cut the cord and ditched the other socials. And already feel healthier!
But another consequence is that I have lost a daily, tailored newsfeed.
Am looking for good accts to follow that offer news on
#oakland
#movements
#southamerica
#centralamerica
#mexico
international
Black radical tradition
#indigenous #sovereignty
#abolition
#anarchism
#antifascism
#anticapitalism
Etc.
Feel free to tag others who might have suggestions!
‘Building back differently’: a case for climate justice through abolition
https://shado-mag.com/do/building-back-differently-a-case-for-climate-justice-through-abolition/
climate justice and abolition can no longer be viewed as separate. Both teach us that learning (and unlearning) are ongoing processes of imagining, collectively organising and collective action. Both require us to approach our society with consideration, care and critique. Both require abolishing the current systems that seek to extract, exploit and dominate people and the planet.
#ClimateJustice #Abolition #collectiveorganizing #collectiveaction #dominationsystems #planetarydefense
By now I hope you've listened to the second part of the podcast series I did with the folks over at @animefeminist on abolition and anime. If not, you can check it out here!
#anime #abolition #gender #media #podcast
https://www.animefeminist.com/chatty-af-192-anime-and-abolition-part-2/
A dead kid isn’t enough? No punishment we can imagine will hurt that family more than it is already hurting. Care, not cages. We need to get out of this punishing mindset & look at WHY people are forced to make bad decisions. #Abolition
Here's a problem I have trying to explain to people why I want to abolish police, abolish prisons. No matter how I phrase things many people hear a moral argument. That police are evil, prisons are evil. But this isn't at all what I mean. In fact seeing the issue that way, as a matter of good and evil, completely obscures the explanation. It brings it into the realm of opinion. It lets people nod their heads and stop listening. Of course people can disagree over things like this!
Dichotomies like that, good/evil, moral/immoral, work this way to cover up truths about the world that are impossible to face and still go on normally. The two poles of such dichotomies immediately conjure up a continuum between them. If something is evil or immoral it can be made less evil or less immoral and that's some kind of progress. Not accepting this kind of incrementalism makes one a moralist, a perfectionist, an idealist, a purist, someone who can ultimately be ignored, someone they can agree to disagree with, like we all do in order to get along with people with so many matters of opinion. There's no need to listen any more, it's just another extreme theoretical position among all the others.
Imagine buzzards eating corpses on the road with their heads deep in the guts of a rotting deer. The stench of death, the slimy putrid ooze on their bald heads. It's not evil, it's how they live, but it's not how human beings live. Being seen by other people willingly, joyfully, smearing one's body with corpse juice, reveling in putrefied rotting dead goop, eating gobbets of rotting flesh, would be shameful, inhuman. It's beyond good and evil. It's not the kind of thing that invites accepting, polite disagreement. No one wants to hear that person's explanations about why wallowing in rotten corpses is good, actually. We want to run far away.
This is what the police are like, what prisons are. They thrive on the bodies of murder victims, they blossom on fields soaked with human blood, rotting corpses. Cops, jailers, their supporters, are willingly swimming in pools of rotten stinking death, joyfully breathing its vapors. This essence is very, very well- hidden inside whitewashed mausoleums by ideologies, social narratives, cultural handshakes, and so on.
I saw this all of a sudden a few years ago and I can't unsee it, the corpses swinging in the wind hanged by the tens of thousands and left to decay, but it's not so easy to explain to people. It's not a matter of stating the right facts, measuring the right statistics, it's a way of looking at the world. It can't be explained quickly, which in practice means often it can't be explained at all.
#Abolition #PoliceAbolition #PrisonAbolition #WhitedSepulchres #BeyondGoodAndEvil
Fulton County
could simply
arrest fewer people
#Atlanta #ATL #FultonCounty #FultonCountyJail #GeorgeChidi #Abolition
New South Wales police are looking to replace a program designed to provide “person-centred, trauma-informed care” to people with severe mental health challenges despite the police minister describing it as “so successful”.
Under the Police, Ambulance, Clinical, Early, Response (Pacer) program, mental health clinicians employed by NSW Health are stationed with police to ensure police powers are only used when necessary in responding to mental health crises.
While the police minister, Yasmin Catley, has lauded the program, the force has disclosed it is looking at alternatives to the scheme in its response to a landmark Law Enforcement Conduct Commission report.
The LECC’s report found almost half of the people involved in critical incidents with NSW police over the past five years were experiencing a mental health crisis. Critical incidents were defined as those resulting in serious injury or death.
#AbolishPolice #Abolition #AbolishPrisons #anarchism #CommunityNotCops
La “presence policière” nuit. La "prévention” par un corps répressif est une vue de l'esprit.
#abolition
Les « escouades mixtes » du SPVM nuisent aux itinérants, dénonce un rapport | Le Devoir
https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/798373/rapport-escouades-mixtes-spvm-nuisent-itinerants-denonce-rapport
Propositions du Sénat pour la #chasse : interdiction de l’alcool + obligation de passer un brevet de premier secours + examen médical annuel #alcoolisme #chasseurs #HOMICIDES #violence #abolition https://theconversation.com/voici-pourquoi-il-faut-interdire-lalcool-a-la-chasse-190996
#TheAppeal is consistently one of the best #criminaljustice publications around. They’re also worker-led.
Donate if you can.
https://theappeal.org/donate/
#law #criminaljusticereform #abolition #journalism #mutualaid
Finally reading “No More Police” by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie. Absolutely vital. I appreciate the astounding number of citations as well. #Abolition #NoMorePolice #AbolishThePolice
A lot of US political talk tacitly assumes that a purpose of government is to help people. One way this assumption manifests itself is as shock that the government openly facilitates exploitation. They prosecute shoplifting but not wage theft! Littering but not industrial pollution! Jaywalking but not killer self-driving cars! Poor people's tax evasion but corporations pay nothing! Student loan defaults but not COVID money fraud!
Often this discourse contrasts current conditions to an imaginary past when the government did its putative job. The top tax rate used to be 90%! The minimum wage was a lot higher in real dollars! Public universities used to be affordable! But really, when was this supposed golden age?
The first governments that colonists set up on this continent were run by enslaving planters to facilitate slave-based capitalism. During the nineteenth century the planters were replaced by industrialists and financiers to facilitate wage-slave-based exploitation. At some point capitalists subbed in professional politicians but the work didn't change. Any gains workers made were the result of resistance, not government beneficence. If there was actually a time when American governments, federal, state, local, meant to help people, when did it start? When did the plantocracy or its successors relinquish control?
Governments here have *never* been on our side. Their main function has *always* been to facilitate exploitation and the transfer of wealth from poor to rich. At any given point in history they've stolen as much as they could get away with, and if it looks like things used to be better it's only because they didn't yet have the means to make them worse. Capitalism isn't amenable to reform, only to abolition. Of the police, of wage slavery, of coercion as a tool of government. So, you know, smash the state!
#Anarchism #Anarchy #Capitalism #WageSlavery #Slavery #Plantocracy #SmashTheState #Abolition
The incredibly brave Harriet Tubman escaped slavery on this day (September 17) in 1849. Through numerous missions, she helped many others escape slavery through the Underground Railroad. She also become a spy and scout for the Union Army and an activist in the women's suffrage movement.
Can you guess where she was born?
https://www.whereintheworldgame.com/?id=5&type=q
#HarrietTubman #Abolition #UndergroundRailroad #education #slavery #history #histodons #geography
Fuck the Police. A really great video to get grounded in the overall breathe of why folks resist policing and prisons and why police and prisons are so easily supported by people from many backgrounds. So many great folks speak with F.D. Signifier in this one.
Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/fdsignifier-fuck-the-police/
Youtube: https://youtu.be/SyEwOxp_Iyw?si=hKKxdMT3IkyUlbJB
Stop Cop City call to action November 13!
As always I'm happy to send some of these stickers for free to anyone, just drop your address in my DMs or send to email address in my profile.
Also taking bulk orders through Etsy if you want a lot or just want to kick in some money to cover costs.
#StopCopCity #DefendTheAtlantaForest #Abolition #PoliceAbolition #ACAB #Distroism
Today in Labor History September 14, 1843: Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Puerto Rican poet, abolitionist, and women's rights activist was born. She and her husband became active in the movement against Spanish colonialism on the island. In 1889, the Spanish authorities banished them for their political activities. In exile in New York, she worked with Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti, for Cuban independence from Spain. She wrote the lyrics for the anthem, La Boriquena. Many believe that the Puerto Rican flag came from her idea of having the same colors as the Cuban flag, but reversed.
#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #PuertoRico #feminism #abolition #slavery #poetry #cuba #LolaRodríguezdeTió #JoseMarti #Revolutionary #books #writer @bookstadon
"Prisoners in Bahrain have suspended a mass hunger strike after 36 days following a pledge from the Gulf monarchy’s authorities to improve conditions, activists have said.
"At least 800 detainees joined the strike, which was the biggest in Bahrain’s history, according to the activists who said some prisoners’ health was deteriorating."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/12/bahrain-prisoners-suspend-weeks-long-mass-hunger-strike
Statement from Indigenous Mazatec anarchist Miguel Peralta following the recent legal ruling in his case.
https://itsgoingdown.org/political-persecution-continues-against-miguel-peralta-in-oaxaca/
#Mexico #Oaxaca #MiguelPeralta #Indigenous #PoliticalPrisoners #abolition
Leonard Peltier’s Letter to Supporters
"I may leave this place in a box. That is a cold truth. But I have put my heart and soul into making our world a better place and there is a lot of work left to do – I would like to get out and do it with you.
"I know that the spirit warriors coming up behind me have the heart and soul to fight racism and oppression, and to fight the greed that is poisoning our lands, waters, and people.
"We are still here."
https://ndncollective.org/i-am-still-here-leonard-peltiers-letter-to-supporters/
Temps in the Houston area were consistently over 100F this year.
Another example of how imprisoning people is so much more violent than whatever 99% of these people may have done.
#abolition now
From: @TexasObserver
https://texasobserver.social/@TexasObserver/111058596196511179
@weilawei @ZhiZhu A system with selective, biased accountability is an injustice institution.
I don't believe the United States/ the Union was meant to be one, when taking the following seriously:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
[I know, it was written at a time before the abolition of the scourge of slavery, but it still may have foreshadowed the coming official end of that crime against humanity in the U.S.]
#RuleOfLaw #DefendTheConstitution #ReconstructionAmendments #Abolition #DueProcess #EqualProtection #VotingRights #HumanRights #CivilRights #DefendTheUnion #DefendDemocracy #DefendAmerica
Playing D&D on death row in Texas. It’s a thing. You can imprison the body, but the spirit finds ways to be free. Abolish prisons now.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/08/31/dungeons-and-dragons-texas-death-row-tdcj
#Abolition
#AbolishPrison
#AbolishPrisons
#DandD
#DungeonsAndDragons
#TTRPG
Excellent new video essay from #FDSignifier on #policing, #prisons, and #abolition
LAST BONUS some early uses of #ForcedPregnancy
"A FORCED PREGNANCY IS COERCED REPRODUCTIVE SERVITUDE that's why abortion needs to be an extension of 13th amdmt 12:58 PM · Sep 3, 2013"
#fedilaw
#FugitiveSlaveLaws
#abolition
#abortion
=====================
next time, when you are told a person is too radical or a shrill because they write about fascism and insist true abolition needs to include reproductive servitude, show them these tweets.
because some of us been right for a long-ass time
BONUS:
this tweet about how "PARENTAL RIGHTS" is nothing but "STATE RIGHTS" which is nothing but "PROPERTY RIGHTS OVER HUMANS"
the fake trans hysteria is the fascists trying to turn their own children into property they can control.. AND TRAFFIC (see Thomas Jefferson)
also, this was from 2019 MARCH, waaaaay before we had even conceived of a world where a pandemic was just in the horizon
"BTW:
a person’s right to body autonomy; to choose whether they want to reproduce or not, IS NOT EUGENICS.
we have a fundamental right to be free, to not be coerced into any kind of servitude
the right to an abortion is the right to be free from reproductive slavery
1:23 PM · Jan 22, 2020
"WHY
FEMINISM
ISN'T ENOUGH
remove abortion services & geography is a form of reproductive coercion.
the state is now a prison & people will have to cross state lines to evade involuntary reproductive servitude.
abortion isnt about privacy.
it's about slavery & colonization
2:33 PM · Feb 6, 2019
BTW: the title of this review of "The American Slave Coast" is A FUTURE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
"America has always been run by millionaires, and by the time of secession, two-thirds of them lived in the South, with human beings composing most of their wealth."
7:49 PM · May 15, 2019
"USA's
RULING CLASS
HAS ALWAYS MADE
THEIR MONEY
BREEDING, INCARCERATING
& SELLING OTHER HUMANS
here's a review of 'The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry', a book every #AbortionRights activist should read
"THAT'S WHY ABORTION ISNT ABOUT PRIVACY RIGHTS with the 13th Amendment Loophole, abortion is about reproductive & sexual slavery
10:44 AM · Feb 27, 2013
If you think of yourself as a moderate, reasonable person and you blanch at the title of this video, get over it and educate yourself. #police #incarceration #abolition #antifascism
"Capitalism requires inequality. And racism enshrines it." - Ruth Wilson Gilmore
The most important thing you can take from the political and ideological persecution of #StopCopCity protestors is that there is nothing historic about it; America itself is engaged against the left and those who desire equality, in a never-ending War on Sharing. There's no use in saying "it can't happen here" when it has happened here, and it does happen here every couple of years. At the end of the day, the State and the fascists both believe the greatest enemy of all, is people who believe in sharing; and we need to start operating as if they are allied on this subject at all times. Short blog post with 100% new content, linked below:
https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2023/09/11/mini-theory-blog-the-war-on-sharing-escalates-in-georgia/
"Indeed, and perhaps more importantly, this official, state-sanctioned suppression against those who oppose capitalism, hierarchies, and grotesque inequality is more or less an objective constant in American history."
« Des enquêtes menées dans différentes régions du monde, dont le Québec, tendent à révéler que non seulement la police est un important vecteur et un multiplicateur de violence immédiate et structurelle envers les populations, mais qu’elle n’a pas non plus les vertus préventives et dissuasives qu’on lui prête. De plus, les réformes échouent à la rendre plus efficace et moins dangereuse.
La présence policière, indiquent de récentes études, n’a qu’un effet marginal sur la réduction des crimes sur la propriété et a un impact nul sur les crimes contre la personne. Plus encore, elle tend à accroître les comportements considérés comme délinquants et à produire et à reproduire une violence directe »
#police #acab #defundthepolice #abolition #violencespolicières #criminalité #crime #sociologie #Justice ⚖
Gérer la violence autrement, ou le court terme sans la police
par Philippe Néméh-Nombré et Ted Rutland et 59 signataires dans Idées dans Le Devoir
https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/797710/societe-gerer-violence-autrement-ou-court-terme-police?
"Crime exists at the intersection of racism, imperialism, and sexism."
- Vivian Saleh-Hannah
#Criminology #CriminalJustice #AbolishPolice #AbolishPrisons #Abolition
This sounds amazing! I'm trying to convince my uni library to buy copies, and trying to fund a copy for myself.
I get so frustrated with book prices.. the ebook of this is almost $70aud.
If you'd like to help a struggling student, my details are here:
https://www.paypal.me/kittensmeow
📚📖📚📖📚📖📚📖📚📖📚
"Abolish Criminology presents critical scholarship on criminology and criminal justice ideologies and practices, alongside emerging freedom-driven visions and practices for new world formations.
The book introduces readers to a detailed history and analysis of crime as a concept and its colonizing trajectories into existence and enforcement. These significant contexts buried within peculiar academic histories and classroom practices are often overlooked or unknown outside academic and public discussions, causing the impact of racializing-gendering-sexualizing histories to extend and grow through criminology’s creation of crime, extending how the concept is weaponized and enforced through the criminal legal system. It offers written, visual, and poetic teachings from the perspectives of students, professors, imprisoned and formerly imprisoned persons, and artists. This allows readers to engage in multi-sensory, inter-disciplinary, and multi-perspective teachings on criminology’s often discussed but seldom interrogated mythologies on violence and danger, and their wide-reaching enforcements through the criminal legal system’s research, theories, agencies, and dominant cultures.
Abolish Criminology serves the needs of undergraduate and graduate students and educators in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. It will also appeal to scholars, researchers, policy makers, activists, community organizers, social movement builders, and various reading groups in the general public who are grappling with increased critical public discourse on policing and criminal legal reform or abolition."
https://www.routledge.com/Abolish-Criminology/Saleh-Hanna-Williams-Coyle/p/book/9780367521332#
#MutualAid #Indigenous #Aboriginal #IndigenousMutualAid #queer #trans #autism #audhd #disability #JobSeeker #PleaseShare #Help #PleaseHelp #SettlerSaturday #SettlerSunday #uni #student #Criminology #CriminalJustice #AbolishPolice #Abolition #AbolishPrisons #anarchism #book
If you haven't seen it, I hope you'll check out this podcast episode I did with @animefeminist !
https://www.animefeminist.com/chatty-af-191-anime-and-abolition-part-1/
Frederick Douglass escaped slavery this day (September 3rd) in 1838. He became a best-selling author, national abolitionist leader, statesman, social reformer and one of the great orators of the time.
Do you know where he was born?
https://www.whereintheworldgame.com/?id=12&type=q
#FrederickDouglass #Abolition #education #slavery #history #histodons @histodons #geography
Today in Labor History September 3, 1838: Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland to freedom in the north, where he became a leader of the abolitionist movement. During his lifetime, he wrote 3 autobiographies and became a best-selling author. He also fought for women’s suffrage and was the first black man nominated to run for vice president. Douglass opposed colonialism and segregated schools. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, never smiling once for the camera so as to not play into the racist myth of the happy slave.
#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #slavery #Abolition #FrederickDouglass #feminism #segregation #education #colonialism #author #writer #biography #BlackMastadon @bookstadon
Una gran parte del debate sobre la abolición de la policía se refiere a las respuestas no policiales a la delincuencia violenta, pero la mayor parte del trabajo policial no está relacionado con la delincuencia violenta. La mayor parte, tal vez todo, es de naturaleza económica – diseñado para evitar que los trabajadores utilicen la propiedad productiva para satisfacer sus propias necesidades directamente – para mantener los bienes comunes cerrados. Este trabajo significa que la policía está inextricablemente integrada en la economía de maneras sorprendentes que en gran medida no se discuten en el contexto de la abolición, lo que desencadenaría cambios monumentales, casi inimaginables en la forma en que nosotros, como sociedad, satisfacemos nuestras necesidades humanas a través del trabajo. Es probable que el fin de la policía signifique el fin del capitalismo, lo que sugiere que no será fácil de conseguir dada la magnitud de lo que está en juego.
#Anarchism #Anarchy #Abolition #PoliceAbolition #Anarquismo #Abolición
Swing by next Monday (9/4) and write a letter or drop off a book! We’ll be doing our monthly letters to prisoners writing meet up as well as accepting donations for the book drive to support the people doing time in Coffee Creek.
If you’d like to drop off a book please remember that they need to be in new condition, nothing explicitly sexual or violent is allowed in, and no technical manuals.
Updated #introduction
Hi I'm Essie! I am white, #agender, #NonBinary, #queer, #autistic, and #disabled. I am constantly learning about #neurodivergence, queerness, politics, nature, #abolition, #AntiRacism, #DisabilityJustice, and all of that mixed together.
I live on unceded Noongar country in #WesternAustralia. I am #StillMasking from covid and will be for the foreseeable future.
Follow my pixelfed account @essie.okay for some (mostly) nature photography.
A great deal of discussion about police abolition concerns non-police responses to violent crime, but most police work is unrelated to violent crime. Most, maybe all, of this is economic in nature – designed to keep working people from using productive property to meet their own needs directly – to keep the commons enclosed. This work means the police are inextricably integrated into the economy in surprising ways that are largely undiscussed in the context of abolition, which would trigger monumental, almost unimaginable changes in how we as a society meet our human needs through work. It’s likely that the end of policing would mean the end of capitalism, which suggests that it won’t be easy to achieve given the magnitude of what’s at stake.
#Abolition #PoliceAbolition #Capitalism #Police #ACAB #LosAngeles #Anarchy #Anarchism #Enclosure #Commons #Landlords #TenantsRights #Squatting
Due to both the prevalence and effectiveness of "copaganda" in Amerikkka, most ongoing public discussions about police abolition must be accompanied by two background talks as well. Specifically, the abolitionist must point out what, despite the pro-cop mythology, the police do not do; namely, they don't solve crimes, or keep our communities safe. Furthermore, the abolitionist must also demonstrate what it is the police actually do in our society; protect private property, maintain hierarchal power structures, and oppress the marginalized on behalf of our capitalist ruling classes.
In today's Picture Show then, we're going to focus on what the police actually *do* by checking out this thirty-two minute, Youtuber and microphone-style video called "The Minneapolis Police: A Criminal Organization," by creator Big Joel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6DGABIcB3w
For the most part, this video is built around the Department of Justice's eighty-nine page report about its two year-long investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department; in the wake of the racialized public murder of George Floyd by MPD officer Derek Chauvin in May, 2020. What I think makes Joel worth watching over Merrick Garland's press conference however, is the context he puts the MPD's staggering array of crimes into as we follow along; specifically, that of a violent criminal organization that considers itself accountable to no one at all, let alone the public.
Starting with the note that Minneapolis is a small city, of roughly four hundred thousand people, whose police force is precisely five hundred and seventy-one people, Joel runs through a litany of DoJ-investigated malfeasance by the MPD that the creator describes as "one of the most galling, horrifying things I have ever seen" before noting that he put the video together just to make sure more people hear about how the Minneapolis police operate. While I encourage you to watch the video, it's fair to describe what Joel covers here as an extensive, comprehensive record of a police force willfully and violently abusing its authority to terrorize, harm, and engage in acts of overt cruelty against primarily marginalized people in the city of Minneapolis. While the creator himself never actually says it, I'm very comfortable describing the police force covered in this video as a racist street gang actively terrorizing whole populations within their jurisdiction; and please let me remind you that Minneapolis is a long way away from the American deep South. As in the case of L.A. County deputy-Sherrif gangs, these murderpigs are openly operating in a part of the country that tells itself "that doesn't happen here."
Time and time again, we're told that violent, racist, criminal policing is a question of poor training, bad departments, and the individual failings of American police officers. The truth however is that the Minneapolis police force Joel is describing, is functionally and factually indistinguishable from virtually any other police force in a major metropolitan area; I know from lived experience for example that if the Department of Justice wanted to investigate the Detroit Police Department, they would find pretty much the same thing. Indeed, the truth is that police in America generally operate both in obscurity, and with almost complete immunity until the precise point some chucklefuck murderpig violently executes a marginalized person with a camera running; finally forcing someone to take a look, thereby uncovering years of violations nobody ever bothered to investigate, or punish in any meaningful way. It's the same story from Ferguson, Missouri, to Louisville Kentucky, and I guarantee you that the DoJ will find the same thing in its latest target, the police force in Memphis, Tennessee.
The simple truth is that violent, fascist police forces function pretty much the same, all over America, because these are not aberrations; this is the system functioning as designed. You can't reform behavior like this, because behavior like this is how the oppressors, keep those they ruthlessly profit from oppressed. The police, particularly in America, are the biggest gang around, and at the end of the day the only thing they really answer to is capital. Public outrage may force the system to burn a few extraordinarily fascist murderpigs from time to time, but the system itself continues on unabated for a reason. And that reason isn't all that complicated; it's because the people running our society, in both the public and private sector, want it to keep functioning that way.
And that my friends, should make you extremely angry.
👀 y’all are getting a sneak peak on the most recent project 👀
We’re doing a book drive! From now through the month of September we’ll be collecting books for the people at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon’s only women’s prison. You can drop off new or *very gently* used books at Revolutions Bookshop, or Venmo money donations to put toward a book order and the cost of shipping.
#PDX #Portland #Prison #Abolition #FreeThemAll #PrisonerSolidarity