abolish the police: but a lot of [white] leftist activism needs to be less about bricking cops and more about protecting, uplifting, and supporting people of colour.

Please sign the petition!!!

if you can, not only sign but also donate to his GoFundMe, run by his mother and cousin. Lakeith has been denied visitation from any family members for the two years he’s been at the correctional facility. he has a daughter who was born after he was arrested that he has been never allowed to see. lets get him out of there.

https://gf.me/u/ykgw4w

Don’t donate to change . Org donate to the go fund me

A few months ago I reblogged a post sharing Jazzy’s gofundme, a girl who was poisoned by her roommate, noting that she only had about half her goal despite the fund being up for several years. I saw a lot of people reblog that version; Just a month or so later when I checked her fund again it had been reached!! And tons of people still reblog it.

I think when people are just scrolling and they come across these posts they don’t check immediately and forget about it, seeing all the notes and assuming the fund is doing well- I think more people need this visualized to realize this person REALLY needs help.

We can’t let Lakeith continue to be punished in this repulsive system. Please make sure him and his fund get the attention Jazzy does and let’s do everything we can to get him to the goal!! We have to reunite him with his family by any means possible.

As of today ( Saturday, August 8th, 2020 ) Lakeith is $12,061 from his goal!!

Just want to raise awareness for the Chicago Torture Justice Center, the first and only organization in the US providing trauma recovery services for survivors of police violence. You can donate here.

pres. trump sent federal troops into portland to squash the protests and they shot someone in the head with an impact round last night and shattered his skull. his blood is still on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse. they are not like local cops and they are NOT fucking around. they carry ARs with live ammo and they are merciless. i am very sincerely scared that federal forces are going to instigate a kent state type situation by killing protesters as an example sometime between now & november and i am very scared it’s going to be here

Video of the protester who was shot being carried away by medics while bleeding everywhere (obvious TW). He is alive but was in critical condition when he arrived at the hospital & needed extensive facial + skull reconstruction surgery. At the time they shot him he was standing on the sidewalk with both hands holding a boombox above his head


Video of a federal officer kneeling on someone while he has a seizure; they did not allow medics to help him. There is word that this person may have died but afaik that is still unconfirmed


Video of federal officers chasing & assaulting medics tending to an unresponsive protester


Video of 15 feds forcibly arresting a disabled trans person and taking away their service dog for the crime of writing on the federally owned sidewalk in washable sidewalk chalk

Full live tweet thread of the night (7/11/20) with a lot more video footage, especially of the absolutely ludicrous amounts of tear gas they used

sorry for the long post—i am not sure how much national coverage this is getting and i really want people to know what’s going on here. they are behaving like an occupying army & treating citizens like enemy combatants

ACAB

No person should be able to abuse their power like this and get away with it.

In America we believe in innocent until proven guilty correct?

And we believe the death penalty should only be used in result of the worst imaginable crimes that have been gone over time and time again.

So then why do cops get to kill someone they suspect of criminal activity? No trial or anything?

This is my city, I don’t live in Portland but this is my city. I volunteer at the art museum, I join what protests I can here, I have lived here in the past and I likely will in the future.

My city is under attack, but less than 30 min away in my small town NOTHING is happening. No news, no outcry, no protests, nothing calling attention to the FEDERAL CRIMES being committed in our closest large city! NOTHING!

This is bullshit!

Here’s an independent local news source

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/07/14/28632294/hall-monitor-crossing-the-line

Hall Monitor: Crossing the Line

Reblogging for the local news source

Hey guess what?

We have a homeschool-to-prison pipeline now.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention

Grace is a 15-year-old with ADHD and a long history of behavioral difficulties who ended up on probation after a fight with her mom led to the confiscation of her phone and her briefly stealing a classmate’s phone.

Grace is now in a juvenile facility where her life is at risk from covid because one of her probation conditions was to do her homework, and when her school in Oakland County Michigan went online only, she struggled to complete her distance education homework.

As a result, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan ignored the Michigan governor’s orders to minimize the incarceration of children and ordered Grace imprisoned…for not doing her homework.

The Propublica story on Grace and her single mother Charisse - written by Jodi S Cohen - is a heartbreaker and a half. It paints a picture of a kid whose need for extra educational attention was met by a stern and uncaring system, from caseworker to judge.

Judge Brennan does not come off well in this story. She ordered Grace to appear in person in court - the only case of the day with that requirement - and then refused a continuance when Grace’s lawyer said he would NOT come to court and risk his life to argue her case.

Brennan’s sentence was handed down after Grace’s caseworker Michelle Giroux admitted that she did not know the details of Grace’s learning disabilities and had not familiarized herself with the legally mandated supports for them that Grace had not recieved.

Brennan called Grace a “threat to the community” for missing her homework, denied Grace’s pleas for more time to adjust to homeschooling, and had her taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

It goes without saying that, like the majority of Michigan teens sentenced to youth detention in defiance of the governor’s orders, Grace is Black. Black children in Michigan are four times likelier to be imprisoned than their white peers.

Grace has not been permitted to see her mother, except by videoconference. Her mother’s attempts to bring her clothes and toys have been rebuffed by the facility, because of petty rules like those stipulating that underwear must be briefs, or that jeans can’t be “too tight.”

When Grace is brought out for videoconference status meetings with the court, the child is handcuffed and put in ankle shackles. She makes heartbreaking pleas to be returned to her mother. The judge has ordered her held until at least Sept 8.

For missing her homework.

Action: call Judge Mary Ellen Brennan at  248-701-3183 or 248-858-0355 and ask her to reverse her sentence and send Grace back home

this would never never never happen to a white person

I encourage everyone to read the whole article but just want to draw attention to two particularly outrageous parts:

‘She had told her special education teacher that she needed one-on-one help and began receiving daily tutoring the day after the probation violation was filed. 

Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming whether Grace was meeting her academic requirements. She emailed Grace’s teacher three days later, asking, “Is there a certain percentage of a class she is supposed to be completing a day/week?”

Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”

“Let me be clear that this is no one’s fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming,” she wrote. Grace, she wrote, “has a strong desire to do well.” She “is trying to get to the other side of a steep learning curve mountain and we have a plan for her to get there.”’

and when she was placed in detention:

‘The local school district provided packets of material but no classes. She said that she has not yet worked with a teacher in person or online, and that she meets less regularly with a therapist at Children’s Village than she did at home.’

There’s a change.org petition here: https://www.change.org/p/oakland-county-family-court-division-and-judge-mary-ellen-brennan-stop-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-grace-should-not-be-incarcerated

The petition also lists these emails to contact the judge and the school district if you’re unable to phone or get through:

Email Judge Mary Ellen Brennan’s clerks:

slatonk@oakgov.com chismjacobsr@oakgov.com

Email the Communication Director for Birmingham Public Schools, Anne Cron:

acron@birmingham.k12.mi.us

If you want to bring this to the attention of the BPS Board of Education:

kwhitman@birmingham.k12.mi.us

LAjlouny@birmingham.k12.mi.us

bjennings@birmingham.k12.mi.us

ayoung@birmingham.k12.mi.us

ahochkammer@birmingham.k12.mi.us

nmckinney@birmingham.k12.mi.us

jrass@birmingham.k12.mi.us

please sign the petition and send an email to those above, this is so fucked up

Most of the “keep up the work after the protests have ended!”-type posts I’ve seen are mostly focused on like, reading Black authors and listening to Black voices and unlearning racism, and obviously all of that is absolutely vital - but no amount of individual self-reflection will be able to dismantle institutional systems of oppression. So I wanted to put together some resources for continuing to build a culture of noncompliance and resistance to the police and prison system even after things have calmed down

But first, be aware that the protests aren’t over. It’s June 29th and there are still events and actions being planned regularly across the nation, and they still need your participation and support. If you’re able, please keep your focus there; this list is for what can be done long-term outside of the protests

• Know your rights. Giving the police any more information than you absolutely have to will never and can never benefit you or anyone else - positive evidence given to the police is regularly thrown out in court, whereas negative evidence will be used against you. Know what to say and what you have the right to refuse. You don’t have to answer any questions without a lawyer present, you don’t have to give the police access to your house or car unless they have a current warrant signed by a judge. They will try to intimidate you - learn your rights and don’t let up, don’t ever cooperate with the police

• Don’t snitch. If you see someone breaking the law in a way that doesn’t hurt anybody, keep your mouth shut. If cops knock on your door asking you questions about your neighbors or anyone you know, don’t answer

• Don’t call the cops. If you can solve the problem in a different way, do it. Cops have on multiple occasions murdered the people they were called to help (or bystanders) without provocation. Don’t be complicit in that. Learn how to handle situations as a community or with the help of qualified experts

• When you see an interaction with the police happening, stop and observe. If necessary, film the interaction. Organize and work with groups such as Copwatch to observe the police and hold them accountable

• Use proper opsec, especially if you’re involved with anything that might make you a target for the cops. Downloading Signal is a great simple place to start
  

• Learn about jury nullification, and spread the word. When serving in a jury, you have the right to vote not guilty on a defendant that you believe did commit the crime but doesn’t deserve punishment for it. Don’t be complicit in unjust punishment

• Refuse to do work for the police or prison system. Workers keep the world running and the state relies on our compliance to keep our neighbors under their thumb. We can shut it down

• Continue to support bail funds, even for non-protesters. Cash bail is unjust, and people shouldn’t be in jail just because they can’t pay

• Continue to support legal defense funds as well, such as that of the National Lawyers Guild
  

• Write to prisoners, either by yourself or with groups such as the Anarchist Black Cross or Black And Pink, and organize/support books to prisons programs, commissary funds, reentry programs, and other forms of prisoner support

• Organize and support community-run crisis response organizations like the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon or the Birmingham Peacemakers in my hometown

Here are some other organizations to join that are doing good work in this area:

• Black Lives Matter is obviously a huge voice in racial justice right now. The list of “official” chapters on their website is very incomplete, though, so you may have better luck doing a web search for “[your area] black lives matter” (beware of fakes though)

• Showing Up for Racial Justice is another very active and widespread racial justice network

• Critical Resistance is a grassroots prison abolitionist organization founded by Angela Davis

• The Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement is another active prison abolitionist organization

• The IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee works with prisoners to organize strikes, phone zaps, and other actions combating injustice in prisons

• Again, the Anarchist Black Cross does great work supporting political prisoners through letter-writing and more. The link I’ve been including is to an unofficial federation of ABC groups, though - there may be a group in your area that’s not part of that federation, so a web search for “[your area] black cross” may be better

• Black And Pink is a prison abolitionist organization focused on queer people and people living with HIV/AIDS
  

• Antifascism is of course an important aspect of racial justice and community safety. See @antifainternational‘s guide to getting connected to your local antifascists - though, again, beware of fakes (the “antifa checker” accounts on fedbook and twitter can help)

The police state and prison industrial complex rely on the complicity and cooperation of all of us to function and be effective. By building a culture of noncompliance and active resistance, we can drastically reduce the state’s ability to oppress communities of color. Don’t let the struggle be forgotten with the changing of the news cycle - keep up the struggle until all are free!

Boosts and additional resources are very much appreciated!

Understand that the call to abolish police is also a call to allocate adequate funds and resources to mental health services, livable wages, food security and all other societal factors which facilitate the ‘crimes’ you believe we need police protection from.

democratic mayors be like "yes, black lives matter, but someone broke the window of a dunkin donuts last night so we've given all the police power armor. also curfew started five minutes ago"

All police departments are evil but the NYPD is exponentially more evil than any other PD in the country.

The NYPD has an annual budget if $6 billion. A lot of this budget goes into excessive overtime. When you have such a large budget, it translates into over-policing and dramatically shifts the type of policing that happens. Cops will be more interested in issuing fines as opposed to spending time solving actual crime. This affects poor people and neighborhoods (often people of color) at a disproportionate rate. So over policing for revenue collection and under policing for serious crime ends up becoming a loop.

So when you hear that the NYPD needs an annual budget of $6 billion because “NYC has a high crime rate” just know that it’s like this on purpose. The NYPD drains tax revenue and distributes it internally through excessive overtime and uses fines and fees (officers literally have quotas) to justify it’s need for such a large annual budget.

If the NYPD budget was cut, I promise you they wouldn’t impose an 8pm curfew and have 8000 officers on duty collecting overtime. A budget cut for the NYPD means we could allocate much needed funding to help small local businesses hurt by COVID. We could fund programs on homelessness, mental health, youth services, combating overcrowding in schools and transportation.

If you live in NYC, I urge you to call/email the New York City Council and ask them to cut NYPD funding. This is your right as a tax payer.

The current chair of the Finance Committee is council member Daniel Dromm

Email: dromm@council.nyc.gov

District office phone: 718 803 6373

Legislative office phone: 212 788 7076

Reply All did a great story about how this came to be. 

Part i

Part 2

an addition! defund12.org is a tool that allows you to send an email to ALL of your representatives (there are versions for NYC and other cities) with a script calling for defunding. 

“When I say, “abolish the police,” I’m usually asked what I would have us replace them with. My answer is always full social, economic, and political equality, but that’s not what’s actually being asked. What people mean is “who is going to protect us?” Who protects us now? If you’re white and well-off, perhaps the police protect you. The rest of us, not so much. What use do I have for an institution that routinely kills people who look like me, and make it so I’m afraid to walk out of my home? My honest answer is that I don’t know what a world without police looks like. I only know there will be less dead black people. I know that a world without police is a world with one less institution dedicated to the maintenance of white supremacy and inequality. It’s a world worth imagining.”

— Mychal Denzel Smith, Abolish the Police. Instead, Let’s Have Full Social, Economic, and Political Equality.
(via abolitionjournal)

black lives matter and pride are intrinsically linked. the black trans community have done so much for us, we owe it to them to not forget their movement this month. without black lives, there would be no pride. black lives matter, today and always

• “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights” in Women, Race and Class, 1981
• “Race and Criminalization; Black Americans and the Punishment Industry” in The House that Race Built, ed. Wahneema Lubiano, 1997
• “Political Prisoners, Prisons and Black Liberation”, originally from If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, ed. Angela Davis & Betty Aptheker, 1971
• “Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist” in Women, Race and Class, 1981
• “I Used to be Your Sweet Mama: Ideology, Sexuality and Domesticity” in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, 1999
• “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. Joy James, 1998
• Angela Davis: An Autobiography, 1974 [reprinted in 1988]
• “Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition” in The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. Joy James, 1998
• “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves” in The Massachusetts Review , 1972
• “Globalism and the Prison-Industrial Complex: An Interview with Angela Davis”, conducted by Avery F. Gordon, 1999
• “Class and Race in the Early Women’s Rights Campaign” in Women, Race and Class, 1981
• Are Prisons Obsolete, 2003
• Alternatively, all of this can be found in my Angela Davis dropbox

If it were an individual thing, you’d give them the benefit of the doubt, but it isn’t; it’s an institutional thing. the job itself is a bastard, therefore by carrying out the job, they are bastards. To take it to an extreme: there were no good members of the gestapo because there was no way to carry out the directives of the gestapo and to be a good person. it is the same with the american police state. Police do not exist to protect and serve, according to the US supreme court itself, but to dominate, control, and terrorize in order to maintain the interests of state and capital.

Who are the good cops then? The ones who either quit or are fired for refusing to do the job.

While the following list focuses on the US as a model police state, ALL cops in ALL countries are derivative from very similar violent traditions of modern policing, rooted in old totalitarian regimes, genocides, and slavery, if not the mere maintenance of authoritarian power structures through terrorism.

• police shoot people twice as often as previously thought. Keep in mind that this was self-reported, so we have no way of knowing if these numbers speak to the actual number of shootings in the US. Many of these people are completely unarmed. Police kill far, far more people than terrorists in the US and have killed over a hundred people more than mass shooters did in 2019 that we are aware of. Mass shooters are easily tracked. Police killings are not. 1 2
• Oh, and cops also killed more people in 2019 than school shooters did in all of US history.
• And if they don’t shoot you, they might just airstrike your block and burn your children alive.
• They also shoot one dog every hour, every day. At the absolute least.
• Once you’re in jail, be prepared to sit there for weeks -or months or years. It’s so bad that people constantly plead guilty just so they can get out. It’s so bad and so common, in fact, that over a third of all exonerations come after an individual has pleaded guilty. So much for the right to a speedy trial, huh?
• And getting arrested is easy - tens of thousands of people yearly, in fact, thanks to lowest bidder garbage that police departments use in order to test for illicit substances. Field drug tests are about as reliable as lie detector tests or horoscopes. They just don’t work. They just don’t.
• Think you’re safe if you just follow directions? Yeah, no. And if they don’t just outright kill you, they could make their instructions so arcane and hard to follow that they’ll kill you for not following them, and they’ll usually get away with it. He got away with it, by the way. Surprise!
• They’ll prosecute you for even knowing about crimes cops have committed.
• Think you’re safe in your home? lmao nah. Not even your 7 year old is safe from getting her brains blown out. check out this horrifying megapost on no-knock raids
• Being a taxi driver is literally more dangerous than being a cop.
• cops are more of a danger to themselves than anyone else is to them
• they’ve admitted to stealing as much -or recently more- than burglars through “asset forfeiture,” and the rate of their thefts has been climbing yearly. Keep in mind, these numbers only articulate what’s been reported. It’s probable that they’ve stolen far more than just this.
• police are literally allowed to rape people on the job in 35 states, as they have the power to determine whether or not you consented to sex with them while in their custody.
• up to 50% of the people police murder are disabled
• the police are being trained to kill as if they’re an occupying army and we’re an insurgency. this is an inevitability, as the military-industrial complex needs to keep expanding into new markets.
• Eugenics was still alive and well in the prison-industrial complex up until very recently, and could very well be continuing for all we know, as it was forcibly sterilizing inmates as late as 2010. I honestly don’t see a reason to believe it’s stopped.
• The US surveillance state is massive (and while this post primarily focuses on the US, other countries are just as bad), though much of our surveillance is privatized. This doesn’t stop the police from partnering with private companies, however. This will only get worse as time goes on. Also, we can’t forget about the Patriot Act and Snowden’s PRISM leaks.
• the police, as an institution, are so completely steeped in violence, that up to 40% of them commit acts of domestic violence and other forms of domestic abuse. Most citizens are not even allowed to own firearms if found guilty of domestic violence, and these guys are expected to handle military-grade equipment.
• Police exist to control and terrorize us, not serve and protect us. That’s only their function if you happen to be rich and powerful.

also this: lol

the police as they are now haven’t even existed for 200 years as an institution, and the modern police force was founded to control crowds and catch slaves, not to “serve and protect” – unless you mean serving and protecting what people call “the 1%.” They have a long history of controlling the working class by intimidating, harassing, assaulting, and even murdering strikers during labor disputes. This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature.

The justice system also loves to intimidate and outright assassinate civil rights leaders.

The police do not serve justice. The police serve the ruling classes, whether or not they themselves are aware of it. They make our communities far more dangerous places to live, but there are alternatives to the modern police state. There is a better way.

Further Reading:

(all links are to free versions of the texts found online - many curated from this source)

white nationalists court and infiltrate a significant number of Sheriff’s departments nationwide

Kropotkin and a quick history of policing

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. (2013). Let Your Motto Be Resistance: A Handbook on Organizing New Afrikan and Oppressed Communities for Self-Defense.

Rose City Copwatch. (2008). Alternatives to Police.

Williams, Kristian. (2011). “The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing.” Interface 3(1).

Williams, Kristian. (2004). Our Enemies in Blue: Police and power in America. New York: Soft Skull Press.

–

Source: Watch large group of officers protecting George Floyd’s killer (reddit user american_apartheid)