Rock-A-Bye Baby: On the State's Legitimation of Juneteenth and Liberal Concessions as Political Anesthetization In Slavery's Afterlives

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By Joshua Briond

“Everything has changed on the surface and nothing else has been touched[...] In a way, the state is more powerful than ever, because it has given us so many tokens.”

—James Baldwin

On Thursday, June 17th, President Joe Biden signed a bill establishing June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day, a US federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. According to CNN, the holiday will become the first federal law holiday established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was signed into law in 1983. Ultimately, the bill will allow a fragment of the nations’ surplus populations —excluding much of the largely racialized lumpenproletariat and underclass— a day ‘free’ from the capitalist exploitation and alienation that comes with the traditional day-to-day of the laboring class. The timing of the implementation of the national holiday—amidst rebellions, particularly in Minneapolis, in the aftermath of Winston Smith’s clearly politically-motivated, state-sanctioned assassination—cannot be understood as anything other than yet another attempt at anesthetizing the captive Black colonies in sentimentality and symbolic gestures. 

"this is the afterlife of slavery—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment. i, too, am the afterlife of slavery."

—saidiya hartman, lose your mother: a journey along the atlantic slave route (2006)

The institution of Black slavery, that rendered Black captives as chattel, capital, productive property, was economically, culturally, and politically ubiquitous. Yet, despite its legacies and afterlives, there has been no material reckoning, or atonement for its anti-Black psychosexual and physical terror and violence. In fact, the ghosts of what is largely understood as slavery’s past, have continued to manifest in the economic polity, modern policing and prisons, and social, cultural, and ideological underpinnings, etc. Descendants of Black captives whom, in many ways, remain hyper-surveilled, overpoliced, hyper-exploited, underpaid, alienated, and often succumbed to occupation of our communities and premature death, have little-to-nothing to show for being major instruments in assembling and maintaining the global capitalist economy since we were trafficked to the Euro-Americas. But you are damn sure we have one month per year, and now an extra day, to learn about and hashtag-celebrate the most whitewashed and bleak articulations of Black historical events—events that have largely only taken place because of Black resistance to white terror, violence, and domination. 

“A critical genealogy of White Reconstruction requires close examination of the non-normative—nonwhite, queer, non-Christian, and so on—iterations of white supremacy within contemporary institutionalizations of diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism. Such non-normativities are constitutive of (rather than incidental or exceptional to) the protocols, planning, and statecraft of contemporary counterinsurgency/domestic war, extending and complicating rather than disrupting or abolishing the historical ensembles of anti-Black and racial-colonial state violence.” 

—Dylan Rodriguez, White Reconstruction 

Since 1776 and the founding of the United States of America, the white power structure has been in a constant state of attempting to—arguably, at times, successfully—ideologically and politically sedate the most wretched, particularly the Black colonies, through incremental concessions and symbolic gestures while ultimately supplementing white rule. As Gerald Horne has taught us, this founding itself was brought into being after a successful power struggle against the British rulers to preserve the institution of Black slavery. As noted by Dylan Rodriguez in the epigraph above, and throughout his book White Reconstruction, the white settler-colonial state has had to “undergo substantive reform to remain politically and institutionally viable.” This includes, but is not limited to, incremental (neo)liberal reform as sedation and the multicultural diversification of settler-colonial, surveillance-capitalist, and imperialist apparatuses.

If we are to understand the American project itself as a consequence of intra-European counterrevolution to preserve the institution of slavery. The civil war as described by Frederick Douglass, “[starting] in the interest of slavery on both sides[...]both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro.” The Reconstruction era as an attempt to establish a workers-democracy—in the aftermath of the countless slave revolts across North America and the Civil War ultimately ending chattel slavery—only to be defeated by ruling class forces. Jim Crow as an inevitability of the settler state and its individual deputized upholders’ idiosyncratic anxieties surrounding the collapsing synonymity of Blackness and the slave positionality. The Civil Rights Movement as an understandably decentralized reformist effort toward Black freedom, through attempts to expand the civil liberties of Black people within the American colony, co-existence with whites within the white power structure that became co-opted by the state ordained Black bourgeoisie and US intelligence leading to mild concessions. Then, we—as Black people—have to understand that we have been in an outright war of attrition with the white power structure for nearly half a millennium.

It is important to recontextualize major historical events — from the Civil War, to the crushing of the Reconstruction era, to Jim Crow, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the rise of neoliberalism and the expansion of the carceral regimes posited as the solution to Black rebellion in the 1980s, to modern policing and prisons, etc. — are all distinct types of “reforms” to politically sedate Black surplus populations and sustain white settler-capitalist hegemony. 

In an interview at Howard University, Gerald Horne discusses the weakening and marginalization of Black radical independent institutions, publications, and leaders, such as Shirley Graham, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, as a trade-off to disintegrate Jim Crow in return for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and “other examples of legislation meant to chip away at Jim Crow.” Horne goes on to question whether the price for political “freedom,” in the electoral arena (which many Black radicals would argue, in the age of neocolonialism and pseudo-independence was never actually freedom) was substantial enough to warrant celebration as a form of Black progress without the economic infrastructure and self-determination needed for true liberation and justice. Just like in the 60s, as Horne notes, we are still performing uneven trade-offs with white power. We demand an end to police terror with Defunding the Police at the outset; they give us painted Black Lives Matter streets, while celebritizing, commodifying, and cannibalizing the names and faces of Black martyrs like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We demand healthcare, living wages, and erased student loans; they give us a federal holiday. In the post-Civil Rights era, and the state’s crushing of Black Power, there has been a depoliticization, if not outright assassination, of Black politics: all symbolism, uneven trade-offs, bare-minimum concessions, and identity reductionist representation as a substitute for actual Black power and self-determination. In the era of neo-colonialism, with the expansion and symbolic inclusion into the plantation economy through our coerced [lumpen]proletarization, we have been anesthetized to our continued exploitation, alienation, destruction, and genocide. Liberal multiculturalism, reform, or as I would call it, political anesthetization, at the very least, temporarily, has been able to halt the “problem” of black resistance.

“The understanding that modern policing has emerged out of the dreadful history of Black enslavement brings with it an urgent need to acknowledge what is not yet behind us. The plantation isn’t, as so many of us, Black and otherwise, think or at least wish to believe, a thing of the past; rather, the plantation persists as a largely unseen superstructure shaping modern, everyday life and many of its practices, attitudes, and assumptions, even if some of these have been, over time, transformed.”

- Rinaldo Walcott, “On Property” 

Though there has been a virtual erasing of our chains and the physical plantation (at least for those of us who are not “legally” incarcerated), the plantation economy has expanded and the mere logics and ideological production have remained the same: keep the slave(s) in check. The white power structure has always been concerned with keeping its thumb on the pulse of its slave population. There has been a non-stop, coordinated counterinsurgent effort by the white power apparatus to divert energy away from the inevitable radical potentialities of the slave, colonized, dispossessed, and superexploited classes—especially as capitalism’s contradictions become far too blatant to disguise. The marking of Juneteenth National Independence Day is just a continuation of the settler society’s legacy of empty promises and symbolic gestures to supplant material gains and maintain their hegemony. 

The United States is incapable of bringing about true justice or accountability for the crimes of its psychosexual and political economy beyond these hauntingly insulting and psychopathic attempts at state recognition of its own historical aberrations through moral symbolism. True justice and accountability must be avoided at all costs by this power structure, as this would inevitably expand the political imaginations of people, leading to the incrimination of every cop, soldier, politician, wall street hack, ceo, etc., and exposing itself for what it is: illegitimate and obsolete. Once you realize that all of the violence being exported everyday in and around the US are not individual aberrations that could be changed with a shift in political leadership, but an inevitable and continual outcome of superstructures built on and sustained through anti-Black slavery, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism, everything begins to make sense. It is liberatory. Heartbreaking. Infuriating, even. Because the solution becomes clear. It is the solution that everyone—whether subconsciously or not—is doing everything in their power to avoid coming to. It is the solution the United States and its propaganda networks spend billions of dollars every year to shield from the psyches of its captives. It is what Black captives in Haiti realized circa 1791, and are still being punished for ‘till this day. 

There is a special, psychopathic irony in the legitimation of Juneteenth through the colonial-capitalist state’s immortalizing of the liberation of the slaves through the very structural foundations in which said slaves were rendered productive property as captives, in which the legacies of slavery remain pervasive across social, cultural, political, and economic lineages. Not to mention the colonial and imperialist technologies inspired largely by the events of (anti-)Black slavery and colonialism, exported across the imperialized world for the purposes of land, capital, and resources—under the guise of (white) freedom and democracy. To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, what is the state’s recognition of Juneteenth to its Black captives? To the Afro-Palestinians living under the world’s largest open-air prison on the United States’ dime? Or the slave-labor of mineral miners in the Congo supplying the U.S. resources? How can visualizations of Nancy Pelosi and Black lawmakers singing Lift Every Voice and Sing in ceremony for the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday—while actively rejecting Black organizers’ rallying cries that could improve Black people’s material conditions and save lives, such as Defunding the Police— signal anything other than yet another colonial lullaby to anaesthetize our dreams and efforts toward Black liberation and self-determination? While openly and unapologetically pledging their allegiance to multiculturalist white supremacy in the age of neocolonialism? 

“Let me put it this way, that from a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports, and the railroads of the country, the economy, especially of the southern states, could not conceivably be what it has become, if they had not had and do not still have, indeed, for so long and for so many generations, cheap labor. I am stating very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: I picked the cotton, and I carried it to the market, and I built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing[...] This, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. And no one can challenge that statement, it is a matter of a historical record. In another way, this dream is at the expense of the American Negro.”

—James Baldwin, 1965

On Police Abolition: Decolonization Is The Only Way

(Photo taken by Jordan Gale for The New York Times)

By John Kamaal Sunjata

The United States is a project of both anti-Blackness and racial-colonial power. From the founding of this white supremacist settler-colonial state, Black people have endured 250 years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty years of “separate but equal” legal doctrine, and thirty-five years of explicitly anti-Black housing laws among other insidious forms of de jure and de facto racial discrimination. The racial capitalist state and its policing functionaries employ state violence as a means of containing and controlling the working-class, especially racialized and colonized domestic peripheries. The late political prisoner and revolutionary ancestor George Jackson (1971, p. 99) writes the following:

The purpose of the chief repressive institutions within the totalitarian capitalist state is clearly to discourage and prohibit certain activity, and the prohibitions are aimed at very distinctly defined sectors of the class- and race-sensitized society. The ultimate expression of law is not order—it’s prison. There are hundreds upon hundreds of prisons, thousands upon thousands of laws, yet there is no social order, no social peace. …Bourgeois law protects property relations and not social relationships.

The United States is a punitive carceral state with 25 percent of the world’s population behind bars despite comprising only 5 percent of the world’s population (Collier, 2014, p. 56; Hayes, 2017, p. 17). The American criminal so-called “justice” system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile prisons, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. settler-colonies (Sawyer & Wagner, 2020). U.S. incarceration is disproportionately racialized, targeting Black and brown people who represent 60 percent of the incarcerated (Marable, 2015). If Black and Latino people were incarcerated at the same rate as whites, their imprisoned and jailed populations would decline by almost 40 percent (NAACP, 2019). The problems are not rooted in crime but policing itself which constructs, (re)produces, and institutes white supremacy and anti-Blackness through racial capitalism. The police have been waging asymmetric domestic warfare on Black people, encircling, and capturing their prospects for self-determination and self-actualization. From the Greensboro Massacre of 1979 to the murder of Marcus Deon Smith of 2018 to the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the only solution for Black liberation is abolishing the police and freeing what is essentially a semi-colony of peripheral peoples.

This essay has five sections. This first section discusses the problems of policing. The second section explains the history of U.S. policing and its development. The third section lays out the failure of liberal reforms to grapple with policing as an institution. The fourth section argues the case for police abolition. The last section concludes.

The History of U.S. Policing

The earliest origins of policing in the United States evolved from directly slavery, settler-colonialism, and brutal control of an emergent industrial working-class (Vitale, 2017, p. 34). The organization of police forces within the United States was modeled after that of England. In the early colonial forms, policing was informal and communal, which is referred to as the “Watch” or private-for-profit policing, also known as the “Big Stick.” These policing models had little with fighting crime and more to do with “managing disorder and protecting the propertied classes from the rabble” (Vitale, 2017, p. 35). Strike-breaking and labor surveillance were among the most important services provided by private-for-profit policing, the Pinkerton’s were among the more notable agencies (Spitzer, 1979, p. 195). The “Big Stick” dissolved when 1) company towns declined, 2) labor costs grew more socialized, 3) organized labor grew in its militancy and strength, and 4) major changes happened in U.S. socioeconomic infrastructure (1979, p. 195).

The watch system was not particularly effective at halting crime as watchmen were often drunk or asleep on duty (Potter, 2013, p. 2). As a method of process improvement came the implementation of a system of constables—official law enforcement officers—who were normally paid according to the warrants they served (2013, p. 2). Informal policing models persisted until 1838 when Boston implemented a centralized municipal police force based on the London Metropolitan Police force and New York followed suit in 1845 (Vitale, 2017, p. 36). The main functions of the London Metropolitan Police Force were “protect property, quell riots, put down strikes and other industrial actions, and produce a disciplined industrial work force” (Vitale, 2017, p. 36).

In Southern states, modern U.S. policing developed from the “Slave Patrol” (Potter, 2013, p. 3; Vitale, 2017, p. 46). Slave patrols were tasked with developing terroristic infrastructure designed to prevent slave revolts (Hadden, 2001, p. 20; Vitale, 2017, p. 46; NAACP,  2019). They were vested with the power to “ride from plantation to plantation, and into any plantation” taking up slaves who did not have a ticket from their masters (2001, p. 20). The slave patrols could forcibly enter any private property[ii] solely on the suspicions of harboring runaway slaves (Vitale, 2017, p. 46; NAACP, 2019). The slave patrols had three primary functions: 1) chase, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners; 2) organize terror squads to deter slave rebellions, and; 3) maintain legal and extralegal disciplinary measures for slaves who violated plantation rules to produce desired behavior (Potter, 2013, p. 3; NAACP, 2019).

White people had “tremendous social anxiety” about large groups of unaccompanied slaves and free Blacks intermingling. The police responded by regulating their behavior through the “constant monitoring and inspection of the [B]lack population” (Vitale, 2017, p. 47). After the Civil War, slave patrols were replaced by modern Southern police departments who controlled freed slaves who were now entering the workforce which was primarily agricultural (Potter, 2013, p. 3). The work of the modern police force included enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws and denying Black people equality de jure and de facto (2013, p. 3). The primary concern during this period was forcing Black people into sociopolitical docility (Vitale, 2017, p. 47). More than a response to crime, the police are for instituting a social order that is safe for capital penetration for the sake of capital accumulation, especially from the Black masses (Marable, 2015, p. 94). Capital accumulation requires a stable and orderly workforce for a predictable order of business (Potter, 2013, p. 4). The racial capitalist state, therefore, absorbs the costs of the private sector, protecting its enterprises. The environment must be made safe for capital through an organized system of social control (Potter, 2013, p. 4; Vitale, 2017, p. 34; Marable,  2015, p. 95). Under a system of racial capitalism[i], Black people are among the most brutalized by the carceral state.

The Failure of Liberal Reforms

Liberal efforts at reforming the police have largely been adject failures mostly because liberals misunderstand the role of the police. They ignore that policing itself is an inherently anti-Black institution that is premised on the repression of the domestic Black periphery for the purposes of capital penetration for capital accumulation. The role of the police has served to protect white supremacy and wealth creation for white people while denying Black people essential human rights (Vitale, 2017, p. 33). In the face of 400 years of anti-Black policing institutions that have, through every evolution, maintained a systemic logic of settler-colonialism that relegates the Black masses to a semi-colony within white America, liberals have proposed more training, more diversity, and community policing (Vitale, 2017, p. 33; Samudzi & Anderson, 2018,  p. 13; Rodríguez, 2021, p. 45).

The push for more police training is well-intentioned but it misses the point. Whenever a Black person is killed by police, a common refrain from liberal reformers is “improve use-of-force training.” If these same reformers were around during slavery, there is no doubt they would have called for slave masters to employ more ethical whip deployment techniques. Despite the racial bias training that many officers have undergone, researchers have found that outcomes remain unchanged with respect to racial disparities in traffic stops and marijuana arrests (Vitale, 2017, p. 8). Racist policing is not merely a matter of individual bigotry but institutionalized racism. Asking for increased training of police so police learn “restraint” ignores how the police already exercise restraint against populations that are not marginalized and not targeted. The Capitol Hill riots were illustrative of the police’s ability to show remarkable restraint. The mostly white rioters were not subjected to nearly as much force as Black protestors are for nominally peaceful protests (Henderson & Alexander, 2021). Any training that justifies the institution of policing will only strengthen its white supremacist and anti-Black logics, even if there is a rhetorical shift from “Warrior mentality” to “Guardian mentality.”

Another common liberal reform to policing involves diversity hires, in hopes this will result in communities of color being treated with “greater dignity, respect, and fairness” (Vitale, 2017, p. 11). There is no evidence that diversifying police forces affects, much less reduces, their use of force (Friedrich,  1977; Garner, Schade, Hepburn, & Buchanan, 1995; Brown & Frank, 2006;  Lawton, 2007). This tactic of reform is even more insidious because it is a method of counterinsurgency through promiscuous inclusion (Rodríguez, 2021, p. 45). Through political warfare against the domestic Black periphery, the racial capitalist state seeks to (neo)colonize its colonized subjects within their own communities.

Diversity is a tool for manufacturing credibility, increasing external institutional legitimacy without dramatically changing internal institutional formations or technologies of repression (2021, p. 45). Diversity changes the presentation of the white supremacist order, but it does not change its outcome: domestic warfare (Samudzi & Anderson, 2018, p. 13; Rodríguez,  2021, p. 51). White supremacy is a multicultural enterprise: just because the beneficiaries of the racial-colonial order are primarily white does not preclude the use of semi-colonized peoples to accomplish white supremacist ends. Diversity hires will not solve the problems of policing, but they will ensure the white supremacy runs through a sepia filter.

Liberal reformers may present “community policing” as possible reform and prima facie, it sounds reasonable. Who would not want neighborhood persons, known and respected by the communities they live, as officers? The answer to that question maybe someone who understands the role and the institution of policing. Police are tasked with criminalizing disorderly conduct, using up to and including lethal force, and responding to populist resistance with state-sanctioned assertiveness. This is well illustrated in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina by its City Council. At a Greensboro City Council meeting from July 31, 2020, the members of the City Council spoke favorably of community policing. Councilwoman Marikay Abuzaiter is on record saying, “[I]f we ever did consider incentivizing [police officers to live in the neighborhoods they work]. I would think the Chief would need a big raise in his police budget because you are looking at money there.” In the same session, Councilwoman Sharon Hightower said:

In reading articles about ‘community policing,’ it never emphasizes resident, it always talked about relationships. And we can start to build relationships, so we can eradicate this distrust in my community because right now, a lot of people I talk to in my community see a police car and their hair stands up on their neck. So, let’s start to work on that. Build that trust, and if somebody moves in the neighborhood? Great, that’s fantastic. …Let’s spend our resources where we get the most bang for our buck. As community talks about more investment in community problems, let’s do that.

It was certainly admirable that Councilwoman Sharon Hightower wanted to “eradicate distrust” and “build relationships,” but the solutions to the problems for the domestic Black periphery of Greensboro are rooted in anti-Black racism and racial capitalism more broadly, not a lack of police presence. What tools do the police possess for “community”? Punitive enforcement actions such as arrests and ticketing (Vitale, 2017, p. 16). Community policing is only possible as a solution if the police do not have police powers. Attempts at community policing, as demonstrated by the Greensboro City Council members, prioritizes giving more resources to the police to live in neighborhoods than giving resources directly to the marginalized members of the communities. Community policing does not empower the domestic Black periphery, but it strengthens the tools of repression and suppression on the part of the police by increasing their proximity to the territories they occupy.

Recently, the #8CantWait campaign has gathered significant support from liberal reformers who wish to address “police brutality.” It is a set of ideas from the nonprofit Campaign Zero, with policy proposals such as ban chokeholds, change reporting standards for use of force incidents, require police officers to warn before they shoot, and more (Murray, 2020). The #8CantWait campaign is not trying to solve racist policing, it is trying to reduce police killings by 72 percent (2020). Mayor Nancy Vaughan endorsed the #8CantWait proposals (Greensboro City Council, 2020):

I have been looking at some resolutions, I have been looking at one from the city of Memphis who is codifying the #8CantWait, we are looking at making it for the City of Greensboro. It has not been finalized but I would like the City Council to look at, once we get it all written up for the City of Greensboro, passing a resolution for the #8CantWait. I don’t want to wait until [the] next meeting because it’s quite a ways [sic] out, so maybe we could have a meeting and a work session because our next meeting is quite a ways away and the #8CantWait and I don’t think we should wait.

After a similar comment from Councilwoman Sharon Hightower, Greensboro Police Chief Brian L. James responded, “In reference to the #8CantWait and looking at that, we are almost there with some of the things that I have recently [done] and some of the things that I did previously as well as our regular policies and there’s one on the #8CantWait that I would like to have some conversation with y’all around the specific wording…” This underscores not only the uselessness of the #8CantWait campaign but the overall failure of liberal reforms to produce meaningful structural change.

The Argument

The concrete historicity of the United States’ state-imposed, state-promoted, and state-tolerated anti-Black racial-colonial violence and white supremacist domination has perpetuated a consistent and persistent situation of Black devalorization, disinvestment, devastation, destruction, and dislocation. White supremacy articulates and structures the American polity; race as a social construct articulates and structures every social relation and institution. This reality produces a domestic Black periphery, an underclass—a subproletariat—that exists as mere residents of a settler-colony (Samudzi & Anderson, 2018, p. 6). The Black community itself exists as semi-colony within the United States wherein the police are an occupying army (Allen, 1969).

The police have consistently represented (and erected) institutional barriers to Black agency, equality, self-determination, and political expression. That is because policing within the United States is inherently white supremacist and extends the logics of racial-capitalism and anti-Blackness throughout the political economy. With the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, slavery was only abolished as “except as punishment for crime [emphasis added]” (Gilmore, 2020). Black people have been subjected to targeted police surveillance, coercion, force, and incarceration. Slavery was never abolished, it was reformed.

For the domestic Black periphery, the American carceral state and its functionaries have always been in a state of permanent asymmetrical warfare against them (Vitale,  2017, p. 27; Burden-Stelly, 2020, p. 8; Rodríguez, 2021, p. 42). James Baldwin compared policing Black communities to settler-colonial occupation (Baldwin, 1966):

And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover—even in a country which makes the very grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty. … Occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in that New World which the Europeans conquered, and it is axiomatic, in occupied territory, that any act of resistance, even though it be executed by a child, be answered at once, and with the full weight of the occupying forces.

Black people are not citizens, we are residents of settler-colonial occupation. Black lives do not matter under a regime of racial capitalism and ironically enough, Black people were at our most valuable (i.e. most insulated from public executions and imprisonment) when we were legal chattel. In that sense, doing irreparable damage to property-in-chattel was bad for business and few slave patrollers wanted to foot the bill (Marable, 2015, p. 97). A citizen would have a Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, but the residents of the domestic Black periphery can be legally and extralegally murdered by police with impunity (Samudzi & Anderson, 2018, p. 14; Briond, 2020).

The regime of racial capitalism has at its heart, private property ownership, an institution fiercely protected by the carceral state and its settler-colonial agents in policing. Racial capitalism reproduces and buttresses itself and the white supremacist order through a series of supposedly race-neutral policies (Stein, 2019, p. 44). Race-neutral policies themselves have been used to both “discredit and rationalized practices that perpetuate racial stratification” (Siegel, 2000, p. 106). Hence why white supremacy and the anti-Black order it entails can “coexist happily with formal commitments to objectivity, neutrality, and colorblindness” (Harris, 1994, p. 759). The earliest origins of property rights are rooted in racial domination and the interactions between race and private property have played a critical role in subordinating the domestic Black periphery within the American political economy (Harris C. , 1993, p. 1714). Whiteness itself, as a historized social and legal construct, marks power and domination over non-white others (Mumm, 2017, p. 103). Whiteness is valorized and private property ownership is an expression of whiteness; thus, property ownership is conflated with (white) personhood under racial capitalism (Safransky, 2014, p. 238; Bhandar & Toscano,  2015, p. 8). That is why in American society it is perfectly acceptable for white people to kill Black people in defense of private property; however, the domestic Black periphery can never destroy private property in response to the murder of a Black person. Blackness itself represents powerlessness, enslavement, and dispossession (Burden-Stelly, 2020).

The domestic Black periphery exists at the nexus of indispensability and disposability (Burden-Stelly, 2020), subhumanity and superhumanity. The technologies of white supremacy and their accompanying legal strictures and structures reify white supremacist ideologies into the carceral state. Black people represent 28 percent of all people killed by police in 2020 despite being 13 percent of the United States population (Sinyangwe, 2021). Black people are three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people are, and Black people are 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed as well (2021). This demonstrates that “[a]t any given time our government can utilize and maneuver the boundaries of legality and illegality as applicable to the material interests of the ruling class” (Briond, 2020).

Freedom for the domestic Black periphery poses an existential threat to white supremacy as a political economy within the United States because “free[ing] Black people necessitates a complete transformation and destruction of this settler state” (Samudzi & Anderson, 2018, p. 13). The United States cannot exist without the predominant systems of domination and oppression of Black people; it cannot exist without the hyper-policing and hyper-regulation of Blackness. For an internal semi-colony to be free across a geospatial territory, it must be decolonized. For an enslaved people to be free, they must not reform slavery’s conditions but abolish it in its totality. Police abolition is but one step, but a necessary step, in the Black liberation struggle.

Conclusion

The domestic Black periphery can never know freedom so long as policing exists within this settler-colonial state. So long as the Black masses exist as mere residents, citizens in name only, as a semi-colony of white America, constantly surveilled and brutalized by arms of the state, the United States will exist. The United States as a carceral nation begets anti-Black oppressive systems and institutions and that is best exemplified through the police, who act as an occupying army in Black territories, rather than guardians within Black communities. The ideological resistance to police abolition within Greensboro is in part informed by the “racialized colonial logics of the biologically determined criminal, slave, and savage” (Briond, 2020).

There is a Hobbesian assumption that the domestic Black periphery will descend into “the state of nature” unless they are constantly patrolled, surveilled, and policed according to the logics of settler-colonial occupation. The underlying fear has been a constant feature of white supremacist anxieties, a justification for ceaseless instances of anti-Black violence by police who see Blackness as a synthesis of subhumanity and superhumanity incarnate. The amazing feat of political economy has been the militarization of police, the multiculturalism of white supremacy via diversifying the police force, and the escalation of wanton violence against semi-colonized subjects. The central contradiction of the United States is settler-colonialism, the structural location of the domestic Black periphery as simultaneous indispensable and disposable. If Black masses are semi-colonized, the solution is decolonization. If slavery was merely reformed, slavery must be abolished in all its iterations. The U.S. police are the representation and manifestation of modern-day slave patrols. For these reasons and others, the police must be abolished in their entirety and other carceral institutions as well.

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[i] Racial capitalism does not describe a distinct permutation of capitalism or imply there exists a non-racial capitalism, but rather emphasizes that, in the words of Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines.” As a system of political economy, it depends on racist practices and racial hierarchies because it is a direct descendent of settler-colonialism. It is a translation of the “racial, tribal, linguistic, and regional” antagonisms of European feudal society, reconstituted for the American context. It profits off the differentiated derivations of human values, non-white people are especially devalorized and their exploitation is a justifiable and profitable enterprise (see Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

[ii] Private property is not the same as personal property, which is almost exclusively wielded for its use value, it is not a personal possession, it is social relation of excludability. It is the ownership of capital as mediated by private power ownership that removes legal obstacles for one’s existence and provides an unalloyed right to violence. It is “the legally-sanctioned power to dispose” of the factors of production and “thus dispose of [labor-power]: property as synonymous with capital.” Toscano, Alberto, and Brenna Bhandar. “Race, real estate and real abstraction.” Radical Philosophy 194 (2015): 8–17.

While Heartening, the Chauvin Verdict Is Still an Outlier

By Matthew John

A pleasant surprise arrived on the annual stoner holiday known simply as 4/20. After a tumultuous year of monumental protests during the deadliest pandemic in recent history, a verdict on the Derek Chauvin case was finally reached. As CNN reported, “Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on all charges in the death of George Floyd,” and “faces up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for second-degree manslaughter.” 

Understandably, celebrations ensued.

But before the dust had settled, we received heart-wrenching news that another Black American had been killed by police. Sixteen-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was gunned down by an officer in Columbus, Ohio 30 minutes before the Chauvin verdict was delivered. The celebrations seemed to fizzle out shortly after they began. This tragic incident is not only a microcosm of the larger systemic issue of police violence, but a lesson in the naïveté of expecting “justice” from this system in the first place. 

The ubiquitous phenomenon of American police killing Black people can be historically traced back to the very inception of policing as slave patrols in the antebellum South. Continuing through the Black Codes, Jim Crow, and the War on Drugs, American policing has always maintained a close bond with white supremacy. A ProPublica analysiseven found that young Black males in recent years were 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than their white counterparts.

In fact, 64 Americans were killed by police during the trial of Derek Chauvin alone. While attention is hyper-focused on high profile cases like that of George Floyd, is it easy to forget that American police officers kill at least 1,000 people each year — a body count higher than all annual mass shooters combined. This nationwide massacre is clearly out of control and primarily encompasses an ongoing genocide against Black and Brown people that is consistent with American history more broadly. As many are reluctantly realizing, there is a good chance that this institution cannot be reformed.

While Democratic Party politicians gave disingenuous speeches exploiting the memory of George Floyd, I reflected on the fact that Floyd was killed in a blue state and in a city with a Democratic mayor. I thought about how Democratic president Joe Biden proposed increasing police funding by $300 million and sent the military to Minneapolis to further brutalize and terrorize those who dared to protest this continuous state violence against people of color. This is a systemic issue — not a partisan one. Both parties are complicit. Yet Democrats positioned themselves as the “good guys” and took credit despite upholding literally the same racist policies as Republicans.

Possibly the worst offender was House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said that George Floyd “sacrificed” himself for the cause of justice. This was an absurd and disgusting remark — Floyd didn’t choose to be murdered. In reality, by convicting him of murder, Derek Chauvin was sacrificed to prop up an unfounded belief in justice within this inherently racist system. And this belief is indeed an extension of the American exceptionalism that is crucial to the ideological survival of this white supremacist, settler-colonial nation on the brink of collapse.

When anyone - especially an agent of “the law” - is filmed conducting a sadistic murder in broad daylight, they should be convicted every single time. The insincere gloating by the political establishment in the wake of the Chauvin verdict reveals precisely how rare anything approaching “justice” is found in the United States. We can show this empirically; between 2005 and early 2019, only 35 killer cops were convicted of a crime (a rate of far less than one percent). Based on these statistics and what we know about the profoundly corrupt culture of American policing, it is clear that the vast majority of violent crimes committed by cops go unpunished.

None of this means we shouldn’t celebrate the Chauvin verdict. We absolutely should. Seeing the Floyd family’s reaction to the news brought tears to my eyes. Although nothing can bring George Floyd back, this outcome is far better than the flagrant dismissal of justice that usually occurs in similar situations. In addition to the prospect of a fraction of justice being served, another heartening aspect of this development is the realization that activism works, that mass movements work, and — as much as the establishment doesn’t want to admit it — that property destruction works. Especially under capitalism, where human need is commodified and private property is valued more than life itself, threatening almighty property is one of the only tactics that catches the attention of the ruling class.

As Frederick Douglass famously said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Without the massive protest movement (likely the largest in U.S. history) in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, that vicious thug Derek Chauvin would likely still be roaming free in the streets of Minneapolis. While we can recognize the significance of this verdict, we must also recognize that we have a long way to go to organize a multi-racial, working-class movement capable of enacting systemic change. If this is what it took to convict an obvious murderer, imagine what it will take to build the kind of society we want.

South Station (Albany, NY) Occupation Ends in Community Brutalization

By Canyon Ryan

After the murder of Duante Wright in Minneapolis, the same city where the Derek Chauvin trial  was taking place, several protests developed in Albany in the ensuing days. The first march was small, held late Sunday night and sparsely attended. The following Monday night, a crowd of approximately thirty marched down Lark Street and surrounding areas before occupying the five-intersection corner of Madison Avenue and Lark Street. Tuesday, to my knowledge, was quiet. 

But the calm all but subsided in the daylight of Wednesday, April 14, when the Albany Police Department (APD) responded to a gathering of protesters at their South Station with typical unwarranted force. Lieutenant Devin J. Anderson “swatted” a megaphone held by a black woman to the extent that he gouged her teeth into her upper lip; and the police subsequently pepper sprayed everyone in the same proximity, including a 14 year old black girl, before huddling back into the station. 

The protest momentarily fractured before reconvening at the same location with dozens of new people standing in solidarity. With the police in hiding, a safe space developed for organizers and activists alike to commensurate and discuss their dissatisfaction with the rate of progress the U.S. has been making in “police reform” since the George Floyd uprisings of 2020. It was decided days later that organizers associated with the Black Lives Matter movement would occupy the South Station precinct until several demands were met.

First, they called for the termination of Lt. Anderson due to the force he displayed against the freedom fighters that Wednesday. It was also later discovered that Anderson has had multiple legal cases brought against him by the Albany community, including one case in which he and other officers conducted several anal cavity searches before allegedly planting crack on a man. 

The second demand was for Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Chief of Police Eric Hawkins to come to the South Station with press live-streaming and speak directly with the occupiers about their grievances. The significance of the “live” element of this demanded meeting was related to Sheehan and Hawkins releasing edited video to the press of protesters yelling at the police and kicking in the window to the Station’s front door. This edited footage did not include any police provocation, and was used to defend Sheehan’s inappropriate accusation that the April 14 BLM demonstrators were similar to the rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (she later retracted this comparison in a non-apology apology), an assertion Hawkins agreed with. Their third demand was for a database where APD records could be easily accessed.

Six days later, no demands had been met. The City and Chief defended Anderson’s right to the force while painting occupiers as violent. In reality, the occupation was a multi-racial real utopia, where people from all walks of life congregated, much to the dismay of Albany City and their police. Homeless, disabled, Black, white, Native, Latinx and others built controlled fires, developed a tent complex and ate food brought to them by the community. Nightly gatherings took place, occupiers and sympathizers drew on the police station with chalk, heaters were set up-- it was a sincere display of multi-racial solidarity. Collections began for distribution to the homeless and houseless community in Albany, for distribution that Wednesday. But on April 22, around 3pm and before any distribution had begun, the riot geared police moved in. 

Against the people, swarms of City agents attacked a small group of occupiers, dragging them across the cold pavement, beating Black men, women and non-binary persons to the ground before cuffing them and hauling them into the station. 8 people were arrested, the encampment was destroyed with Albany Department of General Services assistance, sidewalks once covered with slogans of popular hopes and disdain for police brutality wiped away, and all gathered goods brought to organizers by the community and distributed to the community were burned by the City goon squad. The police would remain in riot gear, protecting an empty street and sanitized building until after midnight. 

The safe space constructed by the people, for the people, was erased in less than six hours by a police department unwilling to compromise with the people. Beholden to their foundation, in the name of rounding up Black bodies, white supremacy and capitalism, the police brutalized Black people in the street only to stand that same space in the following hours with riot shields as the community gathered around them. In the 30 degree weather, police were treated with shift changes every 30-45 minutes while protesters stood in the cold, warmed only by the solidarity of their community. 

In the end, what remained of our project that day was all but demolished by thugs in uniform protecting a barricaded empty street. A crowd of 80 stood on the opposite side of guardrails established by the police, while shift-changing riot squads of 9-15 stood on the other like Palace guards. The thin blue line of silence permeated the air that night, as the police refused to even as much as acknowledge the affliction and suffering brought to the community by their presence.

Many of those arrested today were back on the frontlines once released. For those detained through the night, we know from their commitment to the struggle that had they been released, they would have physically been there with us too. But we also know that those detained were indeed with our collection that, in deep spiritual solidarity against the forms of oppression seated and financed in our City. We will be back at South Station, to reclaim the streets which are rightfully ours. No amount of second-degree rioting, disorderly conduct and obstruction of governmental administration charges can stop the movement of the people. Scare and smear tactics hold no power nor judgement over our commitment to justice. 

Canyon Ryan is a member of the Socialist Party USA National Committee, the Capital District Socialist Party and Capital District United Left Front.

The Necessity of Dismantling the U.S.: A conversation with Ajamu Baraka

By Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

On February 26th, I interviewed Ajamu Baraka for my podcast. Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. He is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. He is a National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, whose activities we discussed.

Baraka has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. He has appeared on a wide-range of media outlets including CNN, BBC, Telemundo, ABC, RT, the Black Commentator, the Washington Post and the New York Times. He is currently an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and a writer for Counterpunch.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the entire interview here.

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume: [In terms of foreign policy], it seems like this last election was just Trump or not-Trump and so there was no discussion about how a Biden administration might be different.

Ajamu Baraka: There really wasn’t. Within the context of the bourgeois press, during the so-called debates, the number of minutes devoted to foreign policy was less than one hour, total. But yet you see that once the Biden administration takes power, some of the first initiatives that they engage in have foreign policy implications. So it’s really incredible that, because of the weight of responsibility that the executive has, that there was so little conversation around foreign policy…

The result was that basically Biden got a pass and there was no real discussion in the campaign and even among civil society. There was an assumption that you just had to get rid of Trump and everything would be just fine. It would be a return to normal. No one talked about what did normal look like and whether what was so-called normal was really in the best interests of not only the people of the US but the people in the global south, who find themselves constantly in the cross-hairs of aggressive US policies.

Sonnenblume: It seems like one untouchable topic these days, both in politics and in civil society, is the US military budget, which as we know takes up over 50% of discretionary spending. It’s obscene. It’s ten times as much as Russia’s is. It’s more than the next ten countries combined. When the conversation comes up of, “How do we pay for Medicare for All?” that’s the perfect opportunity to be like, “Let’s cut that military budget” but then it never comes up…

Baraka: One reason people are not talking about it is because, again, there seems to be bipartisan consensus that the military would get not only what it wants, but even more so. When Donald Trump came into office, that first budget he submitted to Congress included a $54 billion increase in military spending. It’s very interesting because Donald Trump just didn’t know how to filter himself so every once in a while he would say something that was brutally honest, so be blurted out that he thought that that $54 billion was in fact crazy. At first, even Democrats were raising questions about the increase, until a couple months later, I guess they got the memo, and all of a sudden it went quiet. And not only did they give Donald Trump $54 billion increase, they increased it by almost another $30 billion that first year. So that’s been a bipartisan consensus…

The issue we have, as the people, is to make that an issue. To in fact demand that our resources are redeployed to address the objective human rights needs of the people. Because who is benefiting from this 750 billion, or really, over a trillion dollars, spent on defense? It’s the fat cats making the money. These military-industrial complex executives. Everybody’s making money off of this but the people. The people are the ones suffering, so we have to demand that they reduce the spending, that they close down these over 800 military bases worldwide, transfer those resources back to the people. Back to providing housing. Back to providing some decent healthcare. Cleaning up the environment. Creating a first class educational experience for our young people.

But as long as the interests of the rulers prevails, then you’re going to have this obscene behavior, this obscene budget…

We are trying to make people aware of the fact that we have this [global military] basing system, these command structure, and we’re asking a very simple question: Whose interests are being carried out with this enormous expenditure of the public funds? To have these troops, to have these bases that are being built in various parts of the world. Is that helping your family to get a better education? Is that helping you to have some healthcare? A rec center in your community? Do you have access to more capital if you want to start a business? Where is the emphasis? And see, those questions—if the Democrats had been raising those kinds of questions, or pursuing policies that were more in alignment with working class people and the lower elements of the middle class (what we call the petite bourgeoisie)—perhaps the conditions would not have been in place that would have allowed Trump to win the presidency.

These basic questions of whose interests are being served by these policies are the kind of questions that have to be raised on the liberal part of the equation. Because they’re being raised among the radical right and you see a radicalization taking place that culminated in terms of behavior on Jan. 6th.

So there’s a real disadvantage on the part of liberals because they have surrendered their political positions to the neoliberal bourgeoisie and they have disarmed themselves politically and ideologically. As a consequence, they have ceded significant ideological space to the radical right. They’re playing a game that’s very dangerous. Not only are they losing, but all of us are losing as a consequence.

Sonnenblume: You made a reference to neoliberalism being a form or expression of neofascism. I heard you speak about this recently, I believe it was on Black Agenda Radio, and this was new for me to think of it this way. [See Black Agenda Radio 1/25/21.]

Baraka: …What you see is this dangerous coalition of forces, of ruling class forces—Silicon Valley, the military industrial complex, the corporate media companies that control 90% of news and entertainment, and elements of the state: the intelligence agencies—you see the foundation there. We already have the dictatorship of capital. If we want to think about the liberal bourgeois process, it provides a shell for the dictatorship of capital. The shell is not becoming almost an impediment for the neoliberal bourgeoisie. So they are slowly conditioning the US population to accept open fascistic kinds of rule. That’s why they flaunt democracy. That’s why Biden can talk about how he wants to center democracy and human rights, but then turn around and support fascism in Haiti or right-wing elements that are trying to take power in Venezuela.

So not only do I talk about neofascism as having a neoliberal character, it’s important to understand that within the context of the global system, for many years this fascism that we have in the US has been disguised. Because you can have forms of democracy, of democratic practice, at the center, while the connected economies and societies that the empire was connected to, are basically fascism.

When we look at these relationships from the point of view of the oppressed, of the colonized, we say: “Someone explain to us how we didn’t have fascism.”

So for me, I’m hoping that people are alerted to this friendly fascism that’s being developed because in many ways it’s more insidious because it’s not being recognized. So for four years they had us fixated on the theatrics of Donald Trump with his incoherent and clownish behavior, while they were systematically tightening up the national security state, the conditioning of the population to accept an Orwellian-Big-Brother-doublespeak-newspeak kind of environment. It’s very troubling what’s unfolding now because elements who you think would be hip to it, and in opposition, they’ve been helping to go along with it. Just yesterday, the Nation jumped on this whole Facebook thing and called Mark Zuckerberg a danger to democracy. Why? Because they want to engage in even more censorship. To me, it’s kind of crazy.

Sonnenblume: You’ve made a point about this particular topic of social media before, where you’ve talked about how our public space has been privatized.

Baraka: Exactly. It’s been privatized. It’s been colonized. And as a consequence it’s becoming more and more difficult for alternative information to be disseminated. Look, they’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time. Ever since they saw the possibilities and the dangers of the internet and social media. You might recall that at one point, they were attacking what people were referring to as “citizen journalists.” That they weren’t authoritative. That they were just making things up, blah blah blah. It’s always been a concern that information not approved by the authorities would be disseminated and be the source of real political opposition in this country and throughout the entire West. But they never had the nerve to engage in open censorship. But with Russiagate, they had that opportunity to begin laying the ideological foundation and they did it and they did it with a vengeance. So now, four years later, you can have the Nation calling for censorship and no one bats an eye.

Sonnenblume: Within the context of decolonization, do we need to dismantle the United States?

Baraka: Well the short answer is, yes.

Because the United States is a settler-colonial project, a settler-colonial state. It’s had a continuity since 1791, once the new constitutional process was finalized, and that process just basically resulted in the consolidation of the power of the colonists that were on the land since 1619. Even with the Civil War, there’s been continuity, because the US national state won that conflict with the Confederacy. The very fact that the material basis of the US was the conquering of this land and then the confinement of Native peoples to concentration camps that we refer to as “reservations,” provides not only a moral critique but it provides a moral foundation for how a just resolution has to look.

That is, we can’t just be saying, “I’m sorry” and that’s it, or even reparations whatever that’s supposed to be, but it in fact has to be a dismantling of this power, a dismantling of the settler-colonial state.

And that process of dismantling the settler-colonial state and the colonial system requires a decolonization of one’s consciousness. It goes hand-in-hand. That process of decolonizing one’s consciousness is a process in which you root out the ideological foundations of white supremacy. In this society—in this white supremacist, settler-colonial society—everyone who was born—no matter what your ethnicity, nationality or race or whatever—you are subjected to it, and become in essence a white supremacist. It’s part and parcel of the DNA of the US experience. You are taught white supremacy from the very first moments… It’s so pervasive, it’s not even recognized. It becomes just common sense.

So you have to go through a process of purging oneself. Of not seeing Europe as the apex of civilizational development, of understanding that there are other people on this planet who have civilizations, who should be recognized and respected, who have value just as much as the lives of Europeans. You have to rid yourself of Euro-centrism because it’s so pervasive you can’t even see it. So the process of decolonization structurally requires a simultaneous process—maybe even a prior process—of decolonizing one’s consciousness, decolonizing knowledge, decolonizing the very basis of being.

That is the simultaneous process we need to engage in, in this country, and throughout the Western world, because the very notion of modernity, of what is human development, has to be re-thought. Part of that re-thinking is part of the decolonization process. De-centering Europe. De-centering the entire process of modernity.

Sonnenblume: So this makes me wonder: To what degree is the modern technological and industrial state dependent on white supremacy then? Because the wealth that makes it happen comes from these structures. We look at our phones and our other technologies and it’s a colonial and white supremacist process that’s extracting those materials. We know about the child slave labor that’s happening in Africa. Is it even possible to have modern life without it? Can we make a cell phone without colonialism, I guess I’m asking?

Baraka: That’s a very important and profound question. The relationships of colonialism are such that they when they are separate, there has to be a change in what we consume, how we consume, how we relate to nature. That’s part of the process. Now we can’t turn back the hands of time. We have these industrial processes, but right now those industrial processes and the technologies being developed are such that they are almost instruments against collective humanity.

So part of the decolonization process is to take hold of those technological innovations and industrial processes, and reorganize them in a way that makes more sense, that helps to elevate life, and to protect life. And that means a lot of profound changes. For example, what that might mean for these megacities that we have? Can we continue to afford these megacities? When we take hold of the industrial base, maybe we will be able to reorganize agriculture in a different way that will allow people to leave these cities and go back to the countryside and engage in small plot farming, for local and national markets.

The whole logic and rationale of capitalist society has to be looked at in a new way. There are a number of movements that are in fact doing that. That make an argument that we’ve got to completely reorganize every aspect of society if we’re going to be able to survive, because one of the obvious contradictions and consequences of the industrial processes we have is that we’re basically destroying the ability of human beings to sustain themselves on this planet. Mother Earth is going to survive. She might be altered in many ways, but we are the ones who are going to destroy our ability to live on this planet.

So until we’re able to seize power from this minority of the human population that is invested in production processes and social relations that force all of to have to work for them, that put profit over the planet, and over people, then that kind of irrational production will continue, to our detriment. So we have a vested interest in a global revolutionary process.

The major contradiction that Marx identified was between the capitalists and the workers. And that’s a continuing contradiction, but at this stage of monopoly global capital and the irrationality of these processes, the major contradiction today, in my opinion, is between capitalism—the capitalist class—and collective humanity. We have to take power from these maniacs if we’re going to survive. So there’s an objective, material need for us to recognize that we have an interest in taking power back from the capitalist class if we want to survive for ourselves and for our children.

These are the kinds of things we have to look at. When we take power, what kind of societies do we build? That is the other part of the conversation, because you have some people that will argue that there’s some models being developed that represent how a post-capitalist society might look. Well, maybe. But there’s some things in some of these models that some of us don’t want to follow. So what would be created remains to be seen.

But we’ve got to find a new kind of ethical framework, a framework that is based on cooperation, based on equality, based on rationality and decency. I think we will collectively be able to figure out how to reorganize society in ways that will ensure we can survive and live as decent human beings in a new kind of world. I think we can do that.

Listen to the entire interview here.

Black Immigrants and Police Violence

[A mural of Amadou Diallo]

By Asha Layne

Over the years there have been insurmountable evidence documenting stunning violence against Black men and women at the hands of police authority figures. According to an article published in Nature examining police data about police brutality and racial bias, Blacks are 2.5 more times likely than Whites to be killed by police, and unarmed Black men are twice more likely to be shot by police when compared to their White counterparts. While these numbers are troubling, it does not provide context on the national prevalence of Black immigrants fatally killed by authority figures. It is important to mention, that Black immigrants unlike their African American counterparts are not solely profiled by race but by other ethnic identifiers that are often seen in ethnic enclaves in major metropolitan areas.

The foreign Black population is responsible for a large growing segment of America’s Black population as seen in major metropolitan cities like New York and Miami. It is projected, according to a 2015 Pew Study, that by 2060, immigrants will make up 16.4 percent of the overall Black population in the United States. And in 2017, the U.S. foreign-born population living in the United States reached a 44.4 million record and in 2016, Black immigrants population rose to 4.2 million in 2016, a fivefold increase from 1980. To give more context, between 2000 and 2016, the Black African immigrant population more than doubled from 574, 000 to 1.6 million which constitutes 39 percent of the foreign born Black population. For Black immigrants living in these diverse ethnic and racial landscapes can heighten their risk beyond the ‘just being Black’ argument.

The tragic deaths of African Americans killed by the police have garnered national attention resulting in massive protest movements and demonstrations after the deaths of George Floyd and Eric Garner. What is often forgotten, is that 22 years ago, on February 4, 1999, the death of unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo killed by a fusillade of 41 police bullets, and the 1997 physical and sexual assault of Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima by the police would each serve as hallmark cases of police brutality against Black immigrants. The scholarship and movements produced by hallmark cases such as these, operate commonly in racial binary tropes, often Americanizing incidents of police violence against Black immigrants as seen in the media coverage of Botham Jean which commonly identified Jean as a ‘Dallas man’ or ‘Dallas victim’ of police violence.

The cultural heritages of Black immigrant groups are often ignored when coupled with the challenges of navigating through spaces that have a long history of being over policed and where race and ethnicity can also serve as reasons for discriminatory policing practices. Unlike their Black immigrant counterparts, Black Americans never experience the fear of being next due to being a non-English speaking Black immigrant. The Diallo and Louima cases would set the precedence of why Black lives matter while simultaneously showing the increased risk Black immigrants and their families face of being profiled and surveilled not only because of their race but other cultural or ethnic identifiers.

Not discounting the violent encounters between Black Americans and the police, this article seeks to add to the present day conversation on police brutality by acknowledging Black immigrants killed by the police, both past and present, to prevent their stories from fading from our memories. The available evidence on officer-involved shootings in mainstream discourse is widely focused on the African American experience, underscoring fatal encounters experienced by first and second-generation Black immigrants such as Patrick Dorismund, Ramarley Graham, Akai Gurley, Saheed Vassell, and Patrick Dorismound, to name a few. The racial and cultural significance of their stories should not be forgotten despite the Louima and Diallo hallmark cases happening before the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Department of Justice investigation of police agencies, and national conversations about police brutality and police reform.

The Tragedy of the American Carceral System

By Aneesh Gogineni

On January 31st, 1865, abolitionists countrywide celebrated as the 13th amendment narrowly passed in the 39th Congress of the United States. Taught in American schooling systems through a very whitewashed, watered-downed version of history, most Americans view the 13th as the ultimate blow to slavery set us on track to the illusion in which we live now, where conditions seem equal for all on the surface level. Similarly, many Americans believe that legal segregation stopped after the Civil Rights act. However, both of these conclusions indirectly forwarded to the population by American schooling are far from the truth.

The 13th amendment provided a loophole to maintain and mask the subjugation deemed necessary by capitalism to exploit labor and prevent class solidarity by removing any perception of a problem with capitalism but rather shifting it to criminals. Section 1 of the text of the 13th amendment reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The text rules slavery and involuntary servitude illegal in all instances EXCEPT that of punishment for convicted criminals. In this new era of Reconstruction, white capitalists needed a new method of legal subjugation of black people to distract white workers and continue implicit racial biases. And thus, the Prison Industrial Complex was born.

Since its inception, the Prison Industrial Complex has not served to protect our communities but rather has served to protect property and subjugate minority populations. Through the Jim Crow era, the prison industrial complex did what it does best — incarcerate large populations of black people. However, heading into the 1970s and 80’s as policies were becoming more progressive, prison populations globally and domestically were dropping. Crime rates and the need for law enforcement/imprisonment were very low. Incomes arguably the worst president of the 20th century — Ronald Reagan. As Reagan introduced trickle-down economics and the drug war, prisons were built in California although the crime rates were dropping. As Reagan criminalized marijuana, crack cocaine, and all drug “abuse”, he was able to drastically alter our incarceration rates. Through methods like supporting the Contras, a far-right drug organization stopping socialist change in Nicaragua through having them SELL DRUGS TO BLACK COMMUNITIES IN LA. This is one example of the true impact of the War on Drugs. It justified Reagan and the CIA intervening throughout Latin America, exploiting the resources and labor of workers in the Global South, and then incarcerating millions of black people in the US. Through laws like the 3 strikes law, America was able to justify its mass incarceration of predominantly black people and low-income workers throughout the US.

The 13th amendment has allowed slavery and Jim Crow to manifest themselves within the prison industrial complex. Prisoners work for hours a day with almost no pay. They live in horrible conditions and have no true education or rehabilitation. They have no true chance of re-entering society with a second chance. Reminiscent of Jim Crow, released felons cannot vote, don’t have access to the same housing benefits, job benefits, unemployment, etc. This essentially screws them over and incentivizes them to commit more crimes. Therefore, the US has the highest reincarceration rate in the world, nearing 50%. This has become an industry (thus the label “Prison Industrial Complex” as a critique of the system). With private prison corporations like CoreCivic (formerly the CCA) teaming up with the Drug Enforcement Administration to imprison black people, these corporations have capital incentive to imprison people. This results in tragedies like judges being paid to sentence black teens to longer sentences so that the corporations can make money. The problem extends farther than just carcerality, but also within our capitalist systems that lead to inevitable exploitation of workers subjugated in these conditions. This system justifies these carceral systems within the US.

This rotten system has evolved and maintained its dominance through “acts of purity.” By enacting superficial police and prison reform like body cameras, this reform has justified and legitimized the system without attacking the true roots of the system. Thus, we must aim for more radical means to infiltrate/abolish the system than simple reform. Abolitionist justice involves more than attacking carceral systems head-on, but rather dealing with the root cause of this very problem. Through wealth redistribution, education, and programs like AdvancePeace or CureViolence, Abolitionists must engage in these radical means as a method to reach ultimate abolition of these systems. Social programs and services must also happen simultaneously as abolition as a means of empowering the workers of the world to reach the ultimate end goal of communism/socialism.

Notes

For more information and in-depth analysis on issues of carcerality, these two books are wonderful sources.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of ColorBlindness— by Michelle Alexander.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e0185311e0373308494e5b6/t/5e0833e3afc7590ba079bbb4/1577595881870/the_new_jim_crow.pdf

Are Prisons Obsolete — by Angela Davis

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angela-y-davis-are-prisons-obsolete.pdf

We Have To Stop Valorizing Black Cops

By Mary Retta

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

The purpose of policing—to jail and kill Black folks—remains the same regardless of the officers’ race. 

Policing in America is facing a PR crisis. Following the May 25th murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the term “defund the police” has become a rallying cry for thousands across the country. Six months later, however, America has not defunded its police force––and in fact, has in some cases taken steps to give police departments even more money. Instead, police forces across America have taken an insidious approach: painting their departments in blackface.

After the January 6th Trump riot at the Capitol building , Yoganda Pittman, a Black woman, was named the new Chief of Capitol Police. Her appointment followed the resignation of former Chief Steven Sund and the arrest and firing of several white police officers who were found to be in attendance at the MAGA riot. Pittman’s appointment appeased many liberals who falsely believe that allowing Black folks to infiltrate or run law enforcement agencies will lead to higher levels of safety for Black Americans. The termination of several officers  who took part in the riot has convinced many that we are one step closer to “reforming” the police by weeding out the racist, bad apples within the department. 

This is a nice narrative, but a false one; in order to understand why, we must look at the history of policing in this country. Modern policing in America was originally created as a replacement for America’s slave patrol system wherein squadrons made up of white volunteers were empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. These “enforcers” were in charge of locating and returning enslaved people who had escaped, crushing uprisings led by enslaved people, and punishing enslaved workers who were found or believed to have violated plantation rules. After slavery was legally abolished in 1865, America created its modern police force to do the exact thing under a different name: maintain the white supremacist hierarchy that is necessary under racial capitalism. The purpose of policing––to jail and kill Black folks––remains the same regardless of the officers’ race. 

Liberal media has also contributed to the recent valorization of Black cops. In the days after the January 6th riot, many news outlets aggressively pushed a story about Eugene Goodman, a Black capitol police officer who led several rioters away from the Congress people’s hiding places while being chased by a white supremacist mob. Several news outlets published testimonials of Black police officers disclosing instances of racism within the department. A January 14th article in ProPublica  notes that over 250 Black cops have sued the department for racism since 2001: some Black cops have alleged that white officers used racial slurs or hung nooses in Black officer’s lockers, and one Black cop even claimed he heard a white officer say, “Obama monkey, go back to Africa.” 

These white officers’ racism is unsurprising, and I am not denying any of these claims. But focusing on these singular, isolated moments of racism wherein white cops are painted as cruel and Black cops are the sympathetic victims grossly oversimplifies the narrative of structural racism that modern American policing was built upon. After hearing these slurs that they were allegedly so disgusted by, these Black cops still intentionally chose to put on their badge, don their guns, and work alongside these white police officers who insulted and demeaned them, laboring under a violent system with the sole purpose of harming and terrorizing Black and low-income communities. Similarly, while Goodman’s actions most likely saved many lives during the riot, we cannot allow one moment of decency to erase centuries of racist violence. 

The great Zora Neale Hurston once said: “All my skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.” Her words ring ever true today, and these Black police officers are an excellent example of why. It’s tempting to believe that putting Black folks on the force will solve racial violence, but this is a liberal myth we must break free of. Allowing Black people into inherently racist systems does not make those systems better, safer, or more equitable: a quick look at many Black folks in power today, such as Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Lori Lightfoot, and Keisha Lance Bottoms immediately prove this to be the case. Everyone supporting racial capitalism must be scrutinized and held accountable, regardless of their identity. We cannot on the one hand say that ‘all cops are bastards’ and then suddenly feel sympathy when those cops are not white. If we want to defund and abolish the police, we must resist the narrative that Black cops have anything to offer us.

Questioning Violence in the Wake of the Right-Wing Mob Attack in Washington, D.C.

By James Dugan

“The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. . . . [V]iolence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.”

–Kwame Ture, 1969.

We won’t soon forget January 6, 2021—the day in which the nationalistic, xenophobic, and vitriol spewing conspiracy theorist, President Donald Trump, incited a violent far-right mob to descend upon and occupy the U.S. Capitol. The riot, all but ushered in by Capitol Police, resulted in 5 deaths, the evacuation of lawmakers, and the disruption of what is typically a ceremonial session to certify the Presidential election results. Elected officials quickly took to Twitter to denounce the siege and criticize violence from both sides of the political spectrum. Senator Ted Cruz tweeted, “The Constitution protects peaceful protest, but violence—from Left or Right— is ALWAYS wrong.” Presiding over the resumption of the Joint Session of the Congress, Vice President Mike Pence echoed the sentiments of many Twitter handles, stating, “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, You did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins.” In short, condemnations of violence carried the day. Yet, as we continue to unravel and examine these extraordinary events, we might detour to ask why politicians were so quick to equate and denounce violence from both sides when the violence on January 6th came from only one: the extreme end of the far-right.

As a jumping off point, we might first question the assertion that violence is “ALWAYS wrong” by asking whether it has ever been true in our country. In what way is the claim that “violence never wins” accurate? Does not the State, from the Pentagon to the local police precinct engage in violence to enforce policy every single day? Is our country’s origin not rooted in and upheld by violence? These questions in mind, an initial attempt at interpreting the real meaning of the unified denouncement of violence by elected officials on January 6th might read, “Violence on both sides is wrong because violence has been monopolized by the State. Violence is only right when the State engages in it.”

While this definition is certainly more instructive, two lines of questioning should be raised before we accept its legitimacy. First, at what point in this country’s history has violence from the left and violence from the right ever been treated equally by the State? Isn’t our history littered with examples of white vigilante violence that the State either openly allied itself with or swept under the rug? From the civilian militias that assisted the State in quelling slave revolts in the 1800s, to the campaigns of terrorism deployed by the KKK throughout the 20th Century, to the police departments that align themselves with white supremacist organizations at protests today (E.g., Kenosha, Wisconsin), violence coming from the far-right has not only evaded punishment, it has been effectively endorsed by the State.

The second line of questioning that should be pursued relates to the position of the State itself. When the State is engaging in violence, is it doing so as some neutral enforcer of justice? Upon the political spectrum, does the State sit objectively in the middle between right and left? To answer this, we might first say that the function of the State is to maintain the structural integrity and stability of Society. At first blush, that sounds neutral enough. But, if our society is inherently unequal—if it is steeped in racial and economic inequality—if it is built upon a foundation of colonization, slavery, and imperialism—is the State which upholds it truly an unbiased authority? Or does it sit far to the right of the political spectrum as an entity that maintains systems of oppression on behalf of those who benefit from economic exploitation and white supremacy? Asked in simpler terms, if the status quo is unequal, and the State exists to maintain the status quo, to which side of the political spectrum does the State’s existence benefit? Understood in these terms, the State exists not as an impartial mediator between left and right, but—as put by Lenin—the “creation of ‘order’, which legalizes and perpetuates [] oppression.” The State thereby exists to deprive “the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors.” As such, the position of the State is indistinguishable from the position of those who seek to maintain this country’s unequal conditions—i.e., the conservative right.

Why is the State willing to denounce violence from “both sides” if the State effectively exists to serve the right? Well, it should first be noted that this hasn’t always been the case. At times when the State has been unable to quell liberation struggles and social justice movements on its own, it has called upon reactionary civilians to assist in “maintaining order.” By way of example, we can point to the militias that assisted the U.S. Army in protecting settlers as they invaded unceded indigenous land and the militias that assisted the State in massacring coal miners who went on strike to improve working and living conditions. We can point as well to the Fugitive Slave Act—whereby civilians were required to enforce and return fugitive slaves on behalf of the State and wealthy plantation owners. That the street-level fascists—who, as an aside, were so anti-mask that they chose not to wear them while committing crimes in one of the most heavily surveilled buildings in the world—will certainly be made examples of and serve prison time for their federal offenses doesn’t change this reality. It is merely an example of what Benjamin L. McKean calls the “dance between the far right and the electoral right.” As stated in his recent take on the events for Jacobin Magazine, “Right-wing political parties can deplore right-wing street violence while using the disorder caused by reactionary mobs as another occasion for extending power.”

That aside, the State is comfortable in denouncing violence from “both sides” because, when push comes to shove, the State will act on its own behalf to violently suppress any movement that threatens the established order.  In an era in which the Defense budget is to the tune of $740 billion and nearly every local police department is militarized to the point of mimicking a Regiment in the U.S. Marine Corps, the State doesn’t need far-right extremists because the State has the ability to use violence whenever necessary. By monopolizing the use of violence, the State masquerades as a neutral body that proffers to only use force when absolutely justified. But, in practice, the left is typically the only side in which the use of force is ever necessary. The State need not use violence against the far-right because they exist on each other’s behalf—i.e., they are on the same team. The far-right doesn’t threaten the current order, which as we established above, is one of domination and inequality. Thus, in effect, we have finally reached an understanding of what the trope in question actually translates to: “Violence from the left—i.e., violence from the side of the oppressed—is always wrong.” This is the language that has been and will continue to be weaponized against pro-justice movements that yearn for a less oppressive existence. We should be unsurprised when the aforementioned tweets from January 6th resurface in the future to justify the brutal repression of efforts from the left to change the racist and exploitative status quo.

So, let’s return once more to the premise that violence is “ALWAYS wrong.” How can this be true? We have shown that the State has engaged in violence for centuries. We have also shown that the right has done the same without reprimand. Finally, we have established that the current order of our society is one of inherent inequality; an immoral condition of antagonism between—as Malcolm X once put—“those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation.” At this juncture, Paulo Freire’s words are instructive: “With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?”

What do we do with the apparent paradox that Freire raises? Perhaps it is the initiation of violence, rather than violence itself, which is always wrong. Is violence always wrong, or is violence only wrong when it is used to oppress and exploit; to subjugate and tyrannize? Maybe the more important conclusion to reach here is that self-defense, whether violent or not, is not wrong. Malcolm X had one of the most percipient understandings of the nuances between violence and self-defense. To quote his words once more, “I don’t believe in violence—that’s why I want to stop it. And you can’t stop it with love. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense and that vigorous action we feel we’re justified in initiating by any means necessary.”

Alternatively, the paradox could be resolved even if we come to agree with establishment politicians and reactionary conservatives in saying that violence is always wrong. Taking Freire’s words as true, this is merely an admission that the current conditions in this country—the current relationship of oppression—is violent and wrong. If such is true, then perhaps we narrow the definition of “violence” so that it doesn’t include self-defense. Nonetheless, whether only the initiation of violence is wrong, or whether violence is inherently wrong but is defined in such a way as to exclude acts of self-defense, the result is the same: the oppressed are justified in striving for freedom by any means necessary.

With this analysis in mind, we can test the veracity of the Mike Pence/Ted Cruz assertion by raising a few historical questions:

Was Toussaint Louverture wrong to lead the Haitian revolution?

Was Nat Turner wrong to initiate the Southampton insurrection?

Was John Brown wrong to raid Harpers Ferry?

As we ruminate on these final inquiries, we might keep the wisdom of Assata Shakur and Kwame Ture in mind. The former informed us, “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” The latter concisely stated, “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” 

"Defund The Police" is Not Abolition

By Greg Hampton

The demand to defund the police has become a central narrative responding to the graphic killing of Black people. Black organizers must now discuss if this strategy can move us closer to community control of public safety and unpoliced Black neighborhoods.

The defund demand has a number of important branches but at its root it is a call to mobilize community energy towards winning votes at local budget hearings. This effort is not just about the vote but reflects a firm belief in U.S. democracy, which at this exact moment may be the most mistaken political stance possible. During the Jan. 6th meeting at the U.S. Capitol we witnessed a show of strength that could not have happened without deep police collaboration. Misleadingly called an insurrection, this was a public service announcement of the vertical integration of the police from the various classes of the right wing grassroots to the very top of the U.S. government. The police are now part of the formal or informal leadership of both political parties. We very well may have witnessed the last presidency of the united states of america because there are guns pointed at the gears of the U.S. political system. So to get significant Black support, defund the police campaigns will have to explain why we should fight for votes in a country that does not have a democracy.  

What Jan. 6th brings into view is a foundational principle of Black abolition, rooted in the philosophy of George Jackson, which defines the U.S. political system as already fascist especially in regards to Black people. In fact George Jackson argued that "...fascism-corporativism did indeed emerge, develop and consolidate itself into its most advanced form here in Amerika." So when defunders define abolition as mobilizing people to win budget votes they are in opposition to the tradition shaped by George Jackson as they march us back into the burning house Martin Luther King Jr. lamented. 

The myth of U.S. democracy is even more pronounced at the local and state level, where defund must win if they are to set the stage for abolition. How the strongest defund efforts fare in places where they should have a number of progressive allies and resources, is revealing. In Minneapolis the death of George Floyd led to a precinct burning down. Then advocates mobilized the community to win a budget fight. They won the vote to defund the police in order to "dismantle" the department. This was an incredible victory that was quickly rolled back by an unelected city commission. To mask the complete lack of democracy the elected leaders of the city then placated defunders with an $8 million police cut, while adding $11 million in future hires. This cut moved already civilian staff to other departments and the main budget cut really came from police overtime. Minneapolis police surpass their overtime budget and just this summer received 37 times their overtime budget when they repressed the mobilizing from George Floyd's death. If this is evidence of things to come the entire defund the police movement may find even maintaining current police levels as a victory. 

In Los Angeles, Peoples Budget LA, a defund campaign led by BLM Los Angeles managed to cut 8% or $150 million from the LAPD budget. Maintaining this pace every year would completely defund the infamous LAPD in a little over 12 years. Except that the $150 M cut may not actually come out of the LAPD budget. And the $97 Million that is supposedly directly cut from the police budget actually comes from overtime spending, which the LAPD can still get in the event of an emergency. Given the current state of the country, emergencies are inevitable. The defund cut itself simply replaced a planned LAPD budget increase of the same size. 

In some cities the system is so undemocratic and corrupt the police don't bother to hide how they use intimidation to directly control politics. When Baltimore residents pushed a defund the police effort along with Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle they were faced with liberal Black leadership. You can clearly see how that even a campaign this strong is frustrated on all sides by the police union and the undemocratic municipal procedures and committees. They detail that John Hopkins University alone has the ability and desire to maintain their own police force. In some cities this dynamic has collapsed into political theatre. So again and again the strongest defund the police coalitions are faced with undemocratic, untransparent, complicated political systems that regional power players manipulate with ease. This is why Black abolition is a divestment from U.S. democracy and an investment into Black sovereignty. A key difference between abolition for Black liberation and the defund demand, is that defund asks for permission and abolition does not. 

The defund argument also assumes that public support for the police is rational. But the support for police is non-rational. We know this because police funding increases even when crime goes down. The US has always been willing to fund the police even as the rest of the public infrastructure crumbles. This means if all defunders have is data and well researched talking points it wont be enough. Police are supported whether it makes budget sense or not because Black people must be watched, and Black revolt must be kept down. This fundamental role of US police is independent of any budget. You can defeat it but you can not defund it. 

Now in community spaces and corporate media, the call to defund the police rests on a core contradiction. On the one hand defund is presented as a demand housing a set of mandatory budget votes leading up to abolition then at the same time defund the police is the same thing as abolition. Critical Resistance and some of the most well thought out defund campaigns argue that while, "a lot of people are trying to say there's a difference between police reform, defunding the police and abolition. And the call to defund the police is abolitionist. It's a step towards abolition. It is not a separate, moderate or watered-down thing." But this contradiction is what allows reforms and reformists to then present themselves as abolitionists. So if defund the police was the same thing as abolition there would be no need to add it to the original call to abolish the police. And by redefining abolition as winning votes at budget hearings then that means defunders like Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley are also abolitionists fighting to place the public safety of Black neighborhoods under the community control of Black people with no police.

They are not. 

Defund democrats are pro-police and gave Trump record-breaking support for the U.S. global police forces that represss Black uprisings around the world. This support for defund comes from a belief, that it actually would never lead to community control of public safety and unpoliced Black neighborhoods. Besides on the federal level, defunders like the squad may have already defeated the aspirational budget goals of local defund the police efforts. Because by getting behind tax cuts, the CARES ACT and the federal COVID-19 response  they have put together a record breaking transfer of wealth to the same class whose property the police guard.

Right now, U.S. state and local governments spend roughly $115 Billion on local and state police. If defund campaigns completely won and cut 100% of police funding tomorrow, Jeff Bezos alone could cover the loss and still be one of the richest men in the world. The 1% also has direct investment in the killings we see on the news. Starting as a slave market, Wall Street now makes money whenever police kill someone. This is dangerous because even though private funding for local law enforcement is low, if cities were forced to cut the police's public money stream, municipal governments could use any number of private financing mechanisms to refill their coffers. 

While wholesale financing of local police through private funds may still be a bridge too far, the police simply have a wealth of resources at the local level to quietly frustrate defund budget votes. Perhaps the most common feature of U.S. democracy is that laws supported by most people do not pass because of the money defund democrats pass to elites. Even within the current funding guidelines, police foundations can buy time by forcing campaigns to wade through sophisticated budget manipulations, sapping movement energy. The 1% already directly support the army who protect their property through a complicated international network of police associations, drug running operations, unions, foundations, government agencies, and right wing formations. This is the police network that was made even stronger with record level tax cuts and the CARES ACT's huge wealth transfer. The police can also adjust for losses in man power by continuing the expansion of  fusion centers, a national surveillance system that merges local and federal law enforcement. After decades of extorting cities the 1% have developed plenty of local financial instruments to help the police cover losses, play number games, and frustrate defunders with fake victories until they finally figure out how to defeat those campaigns.

But this summer we saw a shift in national consciousness after decades of mobilizing around Troy Davis, the state led horror of Hurricane Katrina, the theft of water in Flint and many other communities, the killing of Miriam Carey and countless more. For a brief moment this summer most U.S. citizens supported the burning of a police precinct. So in light of this history of fascism and our current climate, the belief that the police answer to the votes of city officials is a faith statement only non-Black believers in U.S. democracy can really afford. The only way police will leave Black neighborhoods is because Black people took community control of public safety and opposed police presence. 

Ultimately, what sets the stage for Black liberation isnt policy campaigns but the grassroots organizing that lives in every Black neighborhood. But defund the police paints a linear process for us to follow. This approach starts with protests that force a vote, then the police are defunded. And it makes perfect sense why defunders believe that by "reducing police budgets, communities are able to make autonomous decisions about how to use resources that would otherwise go to surveilling, arresting, and incarcerating them." But whenever a critical mass of people are agitating and taking action, this is the long reform process that is placed in front of the goal of abolition without any explanation of why this detour into the U.S. political system is mandatory or even necessary. In this vein, Working Families Party argues that "the only way to stop police violence is to defund the police and instead create, uplift and fund the community services that keep Black people safe, healthy and free." 

The vote is not the road to Black liberation. That debate has been repeated and is settled just by the fact it still needs to be held. To unpolice our neighborhoods Black people will need to work with each other through families and neighborhood networks. Now when defund gained mainstream prominence most of the people who mobilized on the street and in media were non-Black people. This created a discussion between politicians and non Black groups that may cloud how we currently understand defund the police. So as always its important to bring discussions back to the material conditions of your particular community. Now since Black liberation must be community driven you may assess that defund the police is a useful tool to begin community discussions about abolition. Or you may decide defund the police is a good way to reveal US fascism and the absence of democracy. If that is the case defund presents key questions for Black organizers.

Black abolition views U.S. democracy as a myth, and U.S. fascism as already present. How do you negotiate a call to defund the police that keeps Black politics within the U.S. political system when Black abolition calls Black people to leave that behind? You will also have to determine how you can divest from the police and invest into social services that other Black liberation efforts are working to abolish. As you build, discuss what the role of defund's rational budget campaign when public support for the police is non-rational. Black organizers will also need to discuss the contradiction in the popular stance that defund is the same thing as abolition and also the road to it. After this you will have to navigate anti-abolition defunders who actually oppose putting public safety in organized Black hands. 

Now since Black abolition holds that fascism is already here and that the vote is too small of a room for Black politics, where do Black politics live? While the current defund conversation may currently be between non-Black people and the state, Black abolition requires faith in organized Black communities. Whatever your level of participation and reflection, if you move in that spirit you will be able to find political demands rooted in that practice. Campaigns focused on abstract policy will only connect to Black people as characters they write about, history they theorize or clients their non-profit and contract work services. Black abolition organizers must put into practice tangible outlines of how you and your family can be abolitionists amidst the real violence you face. We see this immediately in community conversations, because Black people routinely shoot down any abstract discussion of unpoliced neighborhoods. Its not enough to just describe the problem of violence, prisons and police. We will have to be disciplined and repeatedly explain abolition in clear creative ways. 

Black politics lives within and among Black people in your neighborhoods, associations, cultural spaces, and families. You wouldn't be here if you didn't come from something, and you do not come from an incompetent people. We are entering a war over the terms and conditions of the next era. "At this stage, how can anyone question the existence of a fascist arrangement?" What happened at the U.S. capitol was only the beginning of what is coming. Even with a democracy, the U.S. has no problem maintaining, "simultaneously a dictatorship over black Americans." Look within your immediate family friends and social circles. You will be surprised at the wisdom you will find there along with first hand accounts of similar times. Trust the work of your elders and the previous movements that hidden within arms reach are all the resources you need to create the cultural practices and institutions that will nurture and sustain a new Black liberation movement. Tap into the best of your ancestral traditions and hone a sharp analysis of the current conditions. Get your team together and get to work. The only way we can establish Black community control of public safety is by making community wide moves and building the bricks and mortar of whatever we need to make abolition a reality on our terms.