Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have been spent on what was sold as a revolution in transparency and accountability. Instead, police departments routinely refuse to release footage — even when officers kill.
Contrary to what Qualified Immunity’s defenders claim, it in no way helps police ‘do their jobs.’ It simply helps them get away with violating people’s civil rights.
"Tortuguita's 'crime' was defending a forest in the heart of Atlanta—yet police moved in full force to evict the encampment, using their usual litany of brutal tactics," said one activist.
Before copaganda became widely televised in shows like “Law & Order,” police were more accurately portrayed as abusers of power.
The Monell Rule is the most important racial justice issue you’ve never heard of.
What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country, in education, in health services, and in every area of American life, it's time for us to stand up in George's name and say get your knee off our necks.
“We have enough soldiers on the streets,” Guerrero recalled Flores’ life-changing counsel. “We need soldiers to fight for our communities.”
The author argues convincingly and in graphic detail that the problem with police in civil society is not just the lack of adequate training, police diversity, increased militarization or even police methods such as the routine brutalization of many people of color, but the dramatic and unprecedented expansion in the last four decades of the too-accepted social role of police. The problem, the sociologist-author insists, is policing itself.
Abolition of the carceral state is a fundamental political goal for the Left today: specifically, abolishing the carceral state’s logic and institutions. . Abolition is both a goal and a discourse: it informs the strategies we adopt, as well as the framework we use to critique the carceral state and describe alternatives.
“The good stuff never applies to people of color, ever.”
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