Both Republicans and Democratic leaders have been pushing increasingly hyped-up narratives to persuade us that crime is exploding, and calling for increased policing and police funding. This is standard Republican rhetoric across the board, and Democratic mayors like Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Eric Adams of Chicago have been parroting a similar message. Even Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia who has received widespread support from progressives, announced Thursday that she is in favor of raising police pay.
In recent weeks, weve also been repeatedly told that bail reform has caused crime to skyrocket. But according to the American Civil Liberties Union, this is a false narrative.
Yes, homicide is up since 2020, but it is very possible that the increase is tied to the expansion of neoliberalism and the dislocations caused by the pandemic rather than the fall guy of minimal bail reform. It is imperative to reject this alarmist rhetoric, which obscures the racist, classist, sexist, and homophobic realities of police violence in the United States.
Even communities we may perceive to be one step removed from the harms of police-perpetrated violence can be targeted by it, and should speak out against so-called toughoncrime approaches.
As an Arab American who has witnessed the chilling effect of surveillance on my community, three factors have inspired me to stand with the movement to defund the police.
First as organizations like Chicagos Arab American Action Network and San Franciscos Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), the Abolishing the War on Terror movement, the Arabs for Black Lives Collective, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights exemplify Arab Americans have a responsibility to stand with Black (including Black Arab), migrant and Indigenous social movements challenging oppressive policing systems.
Middle-class Arab immigrant communities should especially be engaged in these matters, as some of us have benefited from anti-Blackness, the theft of Native land, and the exploitation of working-class migrants perhaps not as directly as white people, but by virtue of living on stolen Indigenous land, or because our families have gained economic privileges related to anti-Black systemic racism.
We should be challenging the privileges we do hold in relation to oppressive systems. The forms of state violence Arab and Black communities face are not the same, but solidarity is both our responsibility and a means to acknowledging accountability to those upon whose backs this country was built and continues to operate.
Second, the racist structures targeting Arab and Muslim migrant communities including airport profiling and government surveillance are part of the U.S.s increasingly broad systems of policing and incarceration. Therefore, we should be in coalition with communities striving to end systems of policing.
U.S. policing systems are broad and work through many forms of containment and punishment, such as racist neighborhood policing, as well as surveillance like police use of gang databases and terrorist databases. Both rely on racial profiling, which civil rights groups assert is unconstitutional because the practice infringes on privacy rights.
Furthermore, the war on terror normalizes the militarization of the police while the military and police are increasingly pushed to share strategies, technologies and trainings to intensify repression of social justice movements and poor communities.
This is evident in military surplus equipment and gear going to police, including armored vehicles and high-powered rifles. After the police-perpetrated killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, police in combat gear made communities look like war zones. There is no evidence that this reduces crime, but the practice raises profound concerns about what we want public safety to look like and whether we are being primed to accept a more militaristic and authoritarian future. (When President Donald Trump renewed a military surplus program reformed by the Barack Obama administration and spoke with amusement about police not roughing people up too much, this sent a clear signal to police and endangered communities of color.)
Across the country, communities have been expressing concerns about how cops target people who they perceive to be Muslim, including Arab Americans who may or may not be Muslim, in Islamophobic rhetoric and actions. The well-known New York Police Department spying campaign, confirmed in 2011, entailed wholesale surveillance of Arabs and Muslims in the New York City area from terrorism investigations of mosques to attempts to infiltrate the board of directors at the Arab American Association of New York.
In May 2022, Chicagos Arab American Action Network (AAAN) released a report demanding the abolition of Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR). They evidence how the Department of Homeland Securitys If You See Something Say Something campaign encourages police officers and the entire population to reportseeing something that they find suspicious. They found these reports focus on suspicions about people who are or are assumed to be Arab, Muslim, or from the Middle East for benign activities termed suspicious and promote information sharing that can enable multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct their own follow-up investigations. Overall, the AAAN explains, they have the effect of repressing dissent and surveilling and criminalizing Arabs and Muslims while reinforcing white supremacy.
In this sense, scholars and activists working with Chicagos working-class Arab immigrant communities have helped expand how we define policing and the communities we refer to as those targeted by policing.
Along similar lines, across the U.S., the Countering Violent Extremism program seeks to enlist Muslim leaders as active participants in spying on their own communities, destroying trust and dividing and undermining those very communities.
The U.S. empires surveillance, counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have been imported from the global war into policing practices domestically and have always had an import/export approach to their carceral strategies, said University of Illinois Chicago doctoral candidate Sangeetha Ravichandran. This creates a dangerous reality for communities of color, who are subjected to a violent, high-tech, white supremacist policing culture in need of abolition.
For many Arab Americans, mistrust in the police is not new. In 1993, Arab Americans filed damage claims against Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego police for sharing confidential information with the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League after hundreds of Arab Americans were notified that their names were included in files sent to them. After 9/11, FBI agents collaborated with police to gather intelligence about Arab Americans.
The third reason why we should support defunding the police is made clear by the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policys report on the Status of Racial Justice for Arab Americans, which found that, although Arab Americans are targeted by police in different ways and to different degrees than Black and other communities of color, they are direct targets nonetheless. It is not only terrorism-related surveillance that entails harmful racial profiling practices impacting Arab and Muslim migrant communities, but the direct violence of police rather than just the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.
We found that some Arab Americans face police officers that cite their experience fighting in the so-called war on terror to justify threatening Arab immigrants. One research participant recalled a police officer making racist assumptions about the interviewees Muslim faith and said the cop intimidated him by referencing the war on terror. An officer saying, I was crushing skulls in Iraq, is intimidating to a Muslim and conveys more than a hint of violent intent.
Another interviewee called the police to protect them against hate speech. Rather than defend him against slurs like camel jockey, the cop defended the perpetrator by saying, You have to understand, he is a veteran.
In the context of Arab American life, radicalized veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with supercharged racist views who interact with Muslims and Arabs as police cannot be viewed as a few bad apples. The entire policing system promotes racism and Islamophobia.
As a result of such disturbing interactions including a cop jokingly asking an Arab woman if she was hiding a bomb under her hijab many Arab Americans have lost faith in the police.
Two recent Michigan lawsuits, one involving officers who forced a Muslim woman to remove her hijab and another, where officers held three Arab Muslim men for nearly three days without charges, further illustrate this problem. The men had called the police for help. Caught on a police body camera, the cops said, the Muslims lie a lot and tried to arrest them by fabricating information about them, according to the lawsuit.
In San Francisco, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center report, Build the Block, Alternatives to Policing, explains that day-to-day interactions with law enforcement among youth in schools coupled with the infiltration of organizations necessitate a deeper understanding of surveillance, policing, sentencing and imprisonment We need ways to respond to harm and fear that do not make us rely on law enforcement or on the criminalization of other communities.
Their report reminds us of how Arab Americans have been drawn into U.S. systems of policing. One Arab family has a parent that was a political prisoner in Palestine. They also had the FBI visit their home in the Bay Area and witnessed their son incarcerated through the same system that criminalizes young Black and Brown men and their activist daughter and her friends living with the ongoing fear of surveillance.
As more and more Arab Americans lose trust in the cops, Arab American social movements are expanding the basis of our solidarity with Black liberation movements. For decades, U.S. police departments collaboration with Israeli settler-colonial occupation forces has helped foster Arab American (and specifically Palestinian diasporic) resistance to policing, igniting Palestinian solidarity with Black struggle. Today, long-standing ties between Arab and Black liberation struggles remind us that it is time to depart from outdated activist frameworks that reduce Arab and Muslim struggle to Palestine and the war on terror on the one hand, and Black struggle to defunding the police on the other. Police violence harms working class Arab migrants and refugees right here in the U.S. First and foremost though, it is crucial to affirm and resist the disproportionate impact of police violence on Black communities. At the same time, organizing from the standpoint that the struggle to free Palestine, abolish the war on terror, and abolish the police are conjoined, or more broadly, that policing is a foundational strategy of the U.S. nation-state to further its many agendas from the prison-industrial complex, to settlercolonialism, the control of borders, and war can go a long way in freeing more and more people.
Go here to see the original:
Heres Why Arab Americans Like Me Are Supporting Efforts to Defund the Police - Truthout
- The Pro-Slavery Lobby: The Abolition of Slavery Project - December 8th, 2016 [December 8th, 2016]
- Campaign for the Abolition of Terrier Work - Badger Baiting - December 10th, 2016 [December 10th, 2016]
- Trump's Big Lie About 3 Million "Alien Voters" Cuts Far Deeper Than You Think - Truth-Out - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- High time for states to invest in alternatives to migrant detention - ReliefWeb - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Industry calls for better cooperation from TWU on safety for truckies - ABC Online - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Indian Govt's Abolition of FIPB Will Help Spur Up Foreign Investments - Entrepreneur - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Donald Trump 'taking steps to abolish Environmental Protection Agency' - The Guardian - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Indian sex worker groups slam global conference on abolition of ... - Reuters - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Mayoral candidate calls for abolition of Cleveland Police - Hartlepool Mail - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Exploiting black labor after the abolition of slavery - Baraboo News Republic - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Justice Ginsburg Backs Abolition Of The Electoral College - Daily Caller - February 7th, 2017 [February 7th, 2017]
- Mrs. Clinton Is Not the Future - National Review - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Commissioner hits back at Mayoral candidate's call for abolition of ... - The Northern Echo (registration) - February 8th, 2017 [February 8th, 2017]
- Judicial review is government at work - The Independent Florida Alligator - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Did Darwin's theories on evolution encourage abolition of slavery? - Washington Post - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Italy sets up fast-track asylum courts for migrants - The Local Italy - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- Pope Francis on death penalty - Philippine Star - February 11th, 2017 [February 11th, 2017]
- The Abolition of Man - Wikipedia - February 12th, 2017 [February 12th, 2017]
- Justice Ginsburg Expresses Concern About Anti-Immigrant Sentiment - Daily Caller - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- Protests as Iowa considers its own 'Scott Walker bill' - Washington Examiner - February 13th, 2017 [February 13th, 2017]
- 'What Is My Future After This?' - Human Rights Watch - February 14th, 2017 [February 14th, 2017]
- Might mandatory retirement come back with 70 as the new 65? - The Globe and Mail - February 15th, 2017 [February 15th, 2017]
- A People's Globalism: Notes Toward a New Left Internationalism - The Nation. - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- County To Apply for Grant for I.V. Community Center | The Daily Nexus - Daily Nexus - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- Another Body Blow to the Trump White House as Labor Pick Withdraws - Yahoo News - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- The myth of the alpha leader is destroying our relationshipsat work and at home - Quartz - February 16th, 2017 [February 16th, 2017]
- Equalities Secretary to seek UK assurances over benefits after ... - AOL Money UK - February 18th, 2017 [February 18th, 2017]
- My Turn: Make no mistake President Trump is the enemy - Concord Monitor - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- The redeeming chaos of a bull in the government china shop - Charleston Post Courier - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- Govt mulls abolition of parallel degree programs in public varsities ... - Capital FM Kenya (press release) (blog) - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- Westminster warned against benefits 'claw back' once 'bedroom tax' abolished in Scotland - Scottish Housing News - February 20th, 2017 [February 20th, 2017]
- Fighting voter ID laws in the courts isn't enough. We need boots on the ground - Los Angeles Times - February 21st, 2017 [February 21st, 2017]
- Manchester's transformation over the past 25 years: why we need a reset of city region policy - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy (blog) - February 22nd, 2017 [February 22nd, 2017]
- UK's 'lower-ranked' universities take non-EU students hit - Times Higher Education (THE) - February 23rd, 2017 [February 23rd, 2017]
- Age Action calls on TDs to back Bill abolishing mandatory retirement ... - BreakingNews.ie - February 23rd, 2017 [February 23rd, 2017]
- Labor won't fight any Fair Work Commission decision to cut Sunday penalty rates: Bill Shorten - Great Lakes Advocate - February 23rd, 2017 [February 23rd, 2017]
- Molly McGrath: Fight ID laws one voter at a time - Virginian-Pilot - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Jim Goetsch: Abolition of abortions means changing the way we think - The Union of Grass Valley - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- New York dockers' union calls for abolition of crime-busting ... - The Loadstar - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Frederick Douglass Park: We're Fixing Our Typo! - Nashville Scene - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Abolishing provincial championships only way to cure fixture ... - Irish Independent - February 25th, 2017 [February 25th, 2017]
- 'Retirement should be an option' - plan to abolish retirement age welcomed - thejournal.ie - February 27th, 2017 [February 27th, 2017]
- Labor won't fight any Fair Work Commission decision to cut Sunday penalty rates: Bill Shorten - Western Advocate - February 27th, 2017 [February 27th, 2017]
- Committee expected to recommend 100m water charges refunds to those who have paid up - Irish Independent - February 28th, 2017 [February 28th, 2017]
- Sinn Fein attacks schools minister over plan to merge two transfer tests - Belfast Telegraph - February 28th, 2017 [February 28th, 2017]
- 'As a lecturer in the 1980s, I kept my sexual orientation to myself' - Times Higher Education (THE) - February 28th, 2017 [February 28th, 2017]
- Dutch Elections: 'Anti-Racist' Party Will Ban 'Black Pete' Traditional Children's Character - Breitbart News - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Molly J. McGrath: Fight ID laws one voter at a time - Herald & Review - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Coveney says he will not legislate for water charges abolition as it would be illegal - thejournal.ie - March 1st, 2017 [March 1st, 2017]
- Taoiseach refuses to back down on water - Newstalk 106-108 fm - March 2nd, 2017 [March 2nd, 2017]
- Crackdown looms for work-related tax deductions - Whitsunday Times - March 3rd, 2017 [March 3rd, 2017]
- We are sick of being told what to do, says Freddie Forsyth - Express.co.uk - March 4th, 2017 [March 4th, 2017]
- Corruption: Abolish security votes, peg minimum wage at N50,000 Ekweremadu - Vanguard - March 4th, 2017 [March 4th, 2017]
- Religious bodies misguided - Trinidad & Tobago Express - March 6th, 2017 [March 6th, 2017]
- *M*A*S*H star speaks out against death penalty - Seacoastonline.com - March 6th, 2017 [March 6th, 2017]
- Immigration under capitalism: Life and death along the US-Mexico border - World Socialist Web Site - March 7th, 2017 [March 7th, 2017]
- 'MARCH 4 TRUMP': About 100 demonstrators gather at Kentucky Capitol - Hopkinsville Kentucky New Era - March 7th, 2017 [March 7th, 2017]
- Abolition Of Work | Prometheism.net - Part 7 - March 7th, 2017 [March 7th, 2017]
- Marc Lamont Hill's one-sided view of racism in the Middle East - Jerusalem Post Israel News (blog) - March 8th, 2017 [March 8th, 2017]
- Close-Up: Ava DuVernay - Varsity Online - March 8th, 2017 [March 8th, 2017]
- OPINION: Grammar knows best - NW Evening Mail - March 8th, 2017 [March 8th, 2017]
- Women worldwide skip work to protest pay gap, abortion laws and Donald Trump on International Women's Day - Mirror.co.uk - March 9th, 2017 [March 9th, 2017]
- Self-employed hit by national insurance hike in budget - The Guardian - March 9th, 2017 [March 9th, 2017]
- How Republicans Might Fudge the Numbers to Make Their Health Care Bill Seem Less Irresponsible - New York Magazine - March 10th, 2017 [March 10th, 2017]
- Who's who in Dutch politics - SBS - March 10th, 2017 [March 10th, 2017]
- Pauline Hanson still a work in progress after all these years - The Australian Financial Review - March 10th, 2017 [March 10th, 2017]
- Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific - World Socialist Web Site - March 11th, 2017 [March 11th, 2017]
- Junior Culture Minister calls Phagwah Festival of Lights - Demerara Waves - March 11th, 2017 [March 11th, 2017]
- Tory backbenchers warn over 'death tax' probate fees hike announced in Budget - AOL UK - March 11th, 2017 [March 11th, 2017]
- With govt notification, orderly system finally out - Times of India - March 11th, 2017 [March 11th, 2017]
- The tax hike for the self-employed isn't actually going to happen - The Independent - March 11th, 2017 [March 11th, 2017]
- Globalization Is Just a Contemporary Word for Financial Colonialism - Truth-Out - March 12th, 2017 [March 12th, 2017]
- Gordon Robinson | Taxed up the ass - Jamaica Gleaner - March 12th, 2017 [March 12th, 2017]
- President Trump needs to score some legislative wins - The Desert Sun - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- The Quietus | Features | Craft/Work | Colouring Out: Queer British Art ... - The Quietus - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- European Parliament vote doesn't mean abolition of visas yet - Poroshenko - Interfax - April 8th, 2017 [April 8th, 2017]
- Why The Tories Are Not My Cuppa - HuffPost UK - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- Why Is Sex Work Not Seen As Work? Part 1 - Feminism in India (blog) - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- NYC college offers Abolition of Whiteness course - My9NJ - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]
- New York public college offering course called 'Abolition of Whiteness' - Fox News - June 6th, 2017 [June 6th, 2017]