Tag Archives: BlackLivesMatter

Prison Abolition

I think abolishing both police and prisons is a gargantuan undertaking. It will mean having to reshape everything we know about property, what we value, and how far we will go to retaliate against violations of property. It will mean decriminalization and legalization of a number of felonies and misdemeanors. It will mean unlearning our learned, acculturated emotions about each other.

If this alternative structure for law and justice can be built, it will be about as important of a change in history as Costa Rica’s abolition of it’s standing armed forces in 1948.

Another Police Shooting of the Unarmed

Uncategorized,

There is an early and sudden death that awaits us.

It can come from the police, the road-raging vigilante, or the fool from down the street with a beef.

Our name will be a hashtag, and justice will not come.

We will be told that our minds and bodies are the problem. We will be told that our bodies deserve death because our culture is a problem. We will be tone-policed, gaslighted and denied legitimacy in our rage.

We’re supposed to kiss the asses of the comfortable, to not “erase the history” of the oppressor, to be grateful for basic ethical behavior.

Maybe if we disappeared from this country, if we dispersed from these shores to diaspora far afield, the insults to our intelligence will stop. Maybe the insulting injustice will stop.

To see the day when we’ll stop being the red-headed bastard child who is hated when defiant but idolized when dead. I look forward to this.

#WalterScott #JoeMcKnight

Police Abolition?

For the love of all that is just, don’t look at the comments. It’s a Fox News video.

I wouldn’t go as far as abolishing the police, but we should consider more non-armed LEOs.

In fact, non-armed officers already exist. They’re known as Community Service Officers, or CSO. CSO are non-sworn civilians who, besides filing reports, are dispatched largely for cases which don’t involve known direct suspect information. They are not deputized to arrest suspects, do not carry handcuffs, and do not carry weapons belts.

CSO typically number in the single digits in the police departments which employ CSO. I think they should be increased in number.

Do we have any CSOs here in Columbus’ Police Department?

Protests in Oakland Block Interstate Highway Traffic

Pretty bold, unsafe, but bold. Good that cars stopped for the protesters. Lots of angry opinions against blocking interstate traffic for commercial reasons. I hope emergency and emergency-motivated vehicles were accommodated by the protesters.

But playing devil’s advocate: isn’t this part of the art of protest? To disrupt the normal flow of the day and call attention to something that is broken in the city? To non-violently inflict an economic impact upon a broken infrastructure?

We don’t live in the era of bus boycotts anymore. Nonviolent, economically-targeted protests have more impact when they affect and disrupt economic venues. We live in the era of sit-ins, die-ins, occupations and the blocking of traffic. This is just as much a tactic which will not win friends, but will non-violently jar our normalcy.

I don’t understand the wishes of Facebook users to inflict bodily harm on protesters with their cars. Seriously, it’s not worth it. It says more about you than about the protesters.

My First #BlackLivesMatter Protest

I can also say that I’ve now participated in a #BlackLivesMatter protest.

It’s one thing to see it on video. It’s another thing to be there in person –

to see Black people from all backgrounds carrying children, wearing dashikis and suspenders, holding up their fists and open palms in fulsome protest under the gray, heavily-cloudy sky;

to see smiling onlookers wave and thumbs-up as you walk the pavement screaming #HandsUpDontShoot up and down the road;

to vocally worry about what’s going to happen to you when you cross the asphalt Rubicon in the face of assembled LEO cars;

to see colleagues of yours arrested by heavily-armored LEOs amidst flashing blue and red lights;

to see the genuine pain and anguish coupled with retellings of Black civilian survival tactics on the streets of Everytown, USA;

to see Euro-Americans walk with us and be in the midst of civil disobedience for Black lives;

to speak with your stutter from the top of your head on the history of the country and what is at stake –

all under the shadow and binoculars and unmarked vehicles of the militarized police force of Columbus, GA.

Get as much video and photo as possible.

The Obama Diary has a lineup of tweets concerning racial harassment of a Philadelphia Barnes & Noble patron by management, as reported by HuffPost Live’s Dr. Marc Lamont Hill:

Everyone knows you can hang out at Barnes & Noble for hours, not buy anything, and not be harassed or have the cops called. That’s pretty much what a lot of high school kids do with their Saturdays. But hey, not for Black people, right? The injustice never ends.

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via What It Means To Be Black In America | The Obama Diary.