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Police violence

Protesting For Black Lives In Trump Country

June 20, 2020 Mesha Jefferson, Otherwords. , , ,
I grew up biracial in a small, conservative town. Still, after living for years in Austin, moving back to one was a culture shock — it felt like going back in time. For the last three years I’ve lived in Volusia County, Florida — home to Daytona Beach, many small towns and suburbs, and a population that gave about 55 percent of its vote to Donald Trump in 2016. Racial divides are still evident in Daytona and the surrounding areas. Daytona itself is divided by U.S. Route 92, with poorer people of color primarily residing south of the road. The further north you go, the richer — and whiter — it becomes. I’ve had my fair share of interactions with racists here. I often feel out of place. Even in my own neighborhood, I don’t feel safe walking around without my dog or another person.

Abolishing The Police: A Radical Idea That’s Been around For Over A Century

June 19, 2020 Talya Zax, Forward. , , ,
In 1905, Pennsylvania did something unprecedented: It founded America’s first state police force. The new institution, which was more highly militarized than previous law enforcement systems, was created for one reason: The state government wanted a more organized and efficient way to break strikes. The new force approached that mission with zeal — and violence. In 1909, members of the Pennsylvania State Police killed several strikers during the Pressed Steel Car Strike, a strike by workers who built railroad cars; after a crowd broke one state trooper’s leg, police were given orders to shoot to kill. A report by the New York World recorded similar orders that were given during the Philadelphia Car Strike, a transit strike that turned into a general citywide strike the following year.

Solidarity Means Dismantling The System Everywhere

June 19, 2020 Progressive International. , , ,
A new solidarity movement is rising. From Los Angeles to Sao Paulo, Minneapolis to London, “Black Lives Matter” is a cry and a demand heard around the world. The message of this movement is powerfully simple: stop killing black people — in their homes, on the streets, and traveling across the sea to safer shores. Yet in its simplicity, it contains the seed of a radical transformation in our planetary system, raging against a machine of racist dispossession to make room for collective and communal liberation everywhere. The last decade has witnessed a sharp turn in two terrifying directions: turning in and cracking down. A new cohort of authoritarians has shunned international cooperation in a retreat to the nation-state and its ancient myths of blood and soil.

Scheer Intelligence: The Powerful Past, Present And Future Of Black Lives Matter

June 19, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 after the murder of Trayvon Martin highlighted the dangers Black children, women and men face daily because of the color of their skin. The grassroots movement has protested against police violence and anti-black racism since then, and advocated for policy changes to address racial injustices. Despite having been active for the better part of a decade now, Black Lives Matter was recently launched into the global spotlight after the police assassination of George Floyd rocked the world.   On this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” Dr. Melina Abdullah, one of the Black Lives Matter co-founders, tells host Robert Scheer how while BLM had worked hard to raise awareness about the slayings of everyone from Sandra Bland to Eric Garner, the activists did not expect the response to Floyd’s death to be so far-reaching. 

Community Control Of The Police – And A Whole Lot More

June 18, 2020 Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The wave of people’s protests across the nation, backed by solidarity actions in cities around the world, has caused the corporate oligarchy and its servants to make promises they can’t keep and give lip service to programs they have always resisted. The Congressional Black Caucus, the vast bulk of whose members backed militarization of local police and elevation of cops to the status of “protected” class, now claims to favor limits on police arsenals, less legal immunities for cops and a grab-bag of other reforms they previously dismissed out of hand. Mayors that know damn well they will have to cut spending across the board due to catastrophic loss of tax revenues during the current, Covid-induced Great Depression, now profess that they plan to withhold funds from cops in deference to the “defund the police” movement.

Here’s What ‘Nonlethal’ Weapons Can Do To The Body

June 18, 2020 By Amy McKeever, National Geographic. , , , ,
Civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd's death has spread around the world, and in some places, protesters are being met with tear gas, rubber bullets, stun guns, and other tactics intended to control crowds without taking lives. Known as nonlethal or less-lethal weapons, many of these tactics were originally pitched as a way to make warfare more humane by incapacitating a person or encouraging them to flee. Law enforcement agencies later adopted these weapons from the military as an alternative to using firearms. Yet people who study nonlethal weapons wonder if reclassification is in order, as research continues to reveal their damaging ramifications on the body. When misused, these weapons break bones, burn the skin, and cause internal injuries that can be fatal. Here’s a look at when and why serious injuries occur with nonlethal weapons, and what people can do to protect themselves.

Life And Times At The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

June 17, 2020 Shane Burley, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
Over the past few weeks we have witnessed one of the largest uprisings in recent US history. The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, brought millions of people in the US and around the world out into the streets in aggressive demonstrations. In cities across the country, police precincts were set on fire, corporate stores looted, and as the police turned their sights on the protests, the numbers only grew. In Seattle, Washington, confrontations with protesters in a gentrified part of the city known as Capitol Hill led to law enforcement’s retreat from their office. Organizers and community members advanced on the area and transformed this eight-block segment of the neighborhood into a collective space, which they soon called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). nI spoke with two organizers of the CHAZ about what drew them there, how it has been working, and where they hope to go with the project. Both are using pseudonyms, one going by Officer CHAZ (OCHAZ) and the other going by Frank Ascaso (FA).

Activists Paint ‘Defund Police’ In Front Of Baltimore City Hall

June 17, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. , , ,
Jaisal Noor: On June 12th, activists painted ‘defund police’ in front of Baltimore City Hall, head of a committee hearing on the Baltimore Police Departments proposed a $509 million budget. Speaker 1: The City Council is voting on a $509 million investment into police at the expense of resources that are necessary to communities. And so we want the Baltimore City Police Department to cut the police budget by $270 million and take that money and invest it in community-based solutions. Speaker 3: The process to abolition is actually a process that’s not going to happen overnight. I know that removing the police in their footprint in our city and redefining public safety is going to be a long process.

‘A Shocking Dereliction Of Duty’: Supreme Court Brushes Off Police Immunity Cases

June 17, 2020 Ryan J. Reilly, Huff Post. , , ,
The nation’s highest court brushed aside a number of cases that would have allowed it to readdress law enforcement officers’ broad immunity from lawsuits over police brutality. Justices on the Supreme Court turned away more than a dozen lawsuits related to qualified immunity, the legal doctrine which lets police officers escape accountability for using tactics that haven’t been expressly banned in prior court decisions. Even when police officers clearly violate constitutional rights, they are often not held liable because the right that they violate wasn’t clearly established by the courts at the time. The decision came three weeks after the police killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests. The mass support of the Black Lives Matter movement has swiftly ushered in public opinion shifts on law enforcement issues, even though it’s unclear whether law enforcement will once again stave off broader changes to America’s policing system. 

Parallels Between Minneapolis And Jerusalem Are More Than Skin Deep

June 16, 2020 Jonathan Cook from his website. , , ,
It is hard to ignore the striking parallels between the recent scenes of police brutality in cities across the United States and decades of violence from Israel’s security forces against Palestinians. A video that went viral late last month of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, killing a black man, George Floyd, by pressing a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes has triggered a fortnight of mass protests across the US – and beyond. The footage was the latest disturbing visual evidence of a US police culture that appears to treat Black Americans as an enemy – and a reminder that rogue police officers are all too rarely punished. Floyd’s lynching by Chauvin as three other officers either looked on or participated, has echoes of troubling scenes familiar from the occupied territories.

The Police May Pull The Trigger, But It’s The System That Kills

June 16, 2020 Richard E. Rubenstein, Transcend. , , ,
Fifty years ago this year, I published my first book, entitled Rebels in Eden – an exploration of mass political violence in America focusing on the uprisings that had by then incinerated substantial portions of the inner city communities of Los Angeles, New York, Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, as well as scores of smaller towns and cities.[i] Those riots were far more destructive than anything experienced in the protests following the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by police and ex-police officers. The sixties uprisings killed several hundred people (almost all Black civilians), injured more than 12,000, and caused billions of dollars in property damage.

Nightly Rally To Seattle’s West Precinct Takes Detour, Shuts Down I-5

June 16, 2020 By Chase Burns, The Stranger. , , ,
Every night around 7 pm, demonstrators now march from the Capitol Hill Organized Protest to the Seattle Police Department's West Precinct. The downhill rally culminates with a handful of speakers who speak out against police brutality. Tonight, the rally ended with an unexpected detour—onto I-5. Speakers spoke on the steps of the West Precinct on Virginia Street for around 30 minutes. There were no police in sight, only a barricade set up in anticipation of the rally. Demonstrators spoke on a bullhorn about SPD's use of tear gas, calling it a war crime and demanding justice. Organizer David Lewis talked about being "pepper-sprayed and gassed for two weeks for this change with you." "It is your voice, it is your feat, it is your bodies that has earned us an audience with the mayor on a weekly basis," he continued. "A lot of the voices here are demanding for change and we will have it."

To Deal With Police, We Must Understand Why They Even Exist

June 15, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
The recent protests across the country following the murder of George Floyd have elevated the demands to defund and abolish the police. This comes on the heels of the nationwide resurgence of a movement for community control of police led by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. We speak with author and activist Max Rameau of Pan African Community Action about the role of police in the bigger picture of the evolution of human beings as protectors of private property and wealth, the pitfalls of defunding police if this dynamic is not addressed and what community control of police looks like. Max is co-author with Netfa Freeman of an upcoming book, "Community Control over Police."

Will The Death Of George Floyd Mark The Rebirth Of America?

June 15, 2020 By Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch. , , ,
I you had told me that, in the span of a few months, a novel coronavirus that dates back only to last year and systemic American racism that dates back to 1619 would somehow intersect, I wouldn’t have believed it. If you had told me that a man named George Floyd would survive Covid-19 only to be murdered by the police and that his brutal death would spark a worldwide movement, leading the council members of a major American city to announce their intent to defund the police and Europeans halfway across the planet to deface monuments to a murderous nineteenth-century monarch who slaughtered Africans, I would have dismissed you. But history works in mysterious ways.

Unfinished Revolution: Where Do The George Floyd Protests Go From Here?

June 15, 2020 Tosh Anderson, Josephine Lee, Zishun Ning, The Indypendent. , , ,
Will we release some steam for a few days, be satisfied with the prosecution and (if we’re lucky) conviction of a few cops, accept a few reforms of a police system that will never be accountable to anyone else but their maker — the ruling class? Will we settle for mere survival, be content not to be killed, so that we can live under the peace of everyday violence and robbery forced upon our communities, our health, and our lives? Will we hang onto illusions that equate equal opportunity with being as exploited as a vanishing group of white, middle-class workers are or as a few black and brown faces rising into positions of power and wealth? That is not the liberation of us all.  If we’ve learned anything from our history, it is that our history’s turning points failed to turn toward true transformation and liberation for people because at each critical juncture from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement to the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, ruling power has hereto been able to disunite working people...
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