In the wake of George Floyd's killing, the public has demanded policies like chokehold bans, access to police department's personnel files, and an end to the idea of qualified immunity. Politicians have countered with talk of body cams, anti-bias training and a harder look at municipal budgets.

Most of these efforts are well-intentioned. Many are worthwhile. But despite the recent flurry of policing and criminal justice-related reforms, there's been virtually no discussion around one of the biggest drivers of over-policing and racial injustice in America: our five-decade long War on Drugs.

If we're serious about making real change in the US then it's time we started talking about defunding the drug war.

To be fair, it's often hard to remember we're still embroiled in the expensive, expansive War on Drugs. After all, the hysteria around (Black) crack babies and dope dealers has been replaced by nuanced portraits of (White) victims of the opioid epidemic. Recent years have seen shifting sentiment around substances like marijuana and the tempering of once-absurdist drug education.

Even the rhetoric has changed. Gone are the Reagan-era invocations of "public enemy number one". They've been replaced by the compassionate though deceptive language of drug courts, dependency issue, a public-health crisis.

But make no mistake: despite its diminished presence in our public and political consciousness, the war's still very much on. Every year, our elected officials funnel tens of billions of dollars and destroy countless lives in order to prop up America's discriminatory and counterproductive drug policies.

Predictably, Black people are generally the ones who pay most dearly, and as recent events sadly demonstrate, oftentimes the price is their life.

There's a direct throughline from our drug war policies to the botched no-knock arrest that killed Breonna Taylor. It's no coincidence that a responding officer taunted the crowd by saying "this is why you don't do drugs, kids" as Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd's neck. Their deaths are visceral reminders of our country's long, sordid history of using drug use real or imagined to control, criminalize and brutalize minority communities.

As headline after headline and data point after data point demonstrate, in both its inception and its enforcement, the War on Drugsand the carceral state it has helped to createhas really always been a War on People.

And more specifically, a war on Black and brown people.

The racialized reality of American drug enforcement isn't a bug, it's a feature. From the very beginning, the explicit goal of our country's drug policies were to criminalize members of what Harry Anslinger the grandfather of American drug enforcementbelieved to be "the degenerate races".

Anslinger architected marijuana prohibition, a policy that's been a linchpin of broken-windows policing and mass incarceration, and pushed it through Congress with fabricated evidence and testimony that "reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

A cursory look at our militarized law enforcement agencies, prejudicial penal code, over-policed minority neighborhoods, and distended criminal justice system, demonstrates the countless ways the drug war has served to animate and exacerbate many of the racial injustices and social inequities we're grappling with today. And to add insult to injury, this unyielding crusade has done virtually nothing to curb American drug consumption.

Criminal justice reform has become an increasingly popular, bipartisan issue over the past few years. But though one of every five people currently incarcerated in American prisons and jails is there because of a drug conviction, there's been very little political movement around drug policy reform issues.

As our politicians pay lip service to ideas around decriminalization and drug courts, American police departments are still making over a million drug possession arrests each year. And unfortunately, the few drug-related reforms that have been prioritized (eliminating crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparities, drug courts, etc.) betray a superficial understanding of both the law and our criminal justice system. Marijuana decriminalization efforts, for example, barely make a dent in the number of or racial disparities related to weed-related arrests.

Even if one were to just focus on our policy of federal cannabis prohibition, we're still talking about millions of stop-and-frisks, traffic stops, summonses, arrests and probation violations each year. In fact, American law enforcement agencies make more arrests for marijuana possession than all 'violent' crimes combined.

Unsurprisingly, most of these cannabis-related encounters are overwhelmingly centered in African-American communities. Despite virtually identical rates of consumption Black people are almost four times as likely as their white peers to be arrested on marijuana charges.

And while it's true that fewer people are serving long prison sentences for weed than they were a decade ago, our draconian and ever-expanding system of collateral consequences means that a marijuana-related encounter can easily result in eviction, student loan ineligibility, and the impossibility of ever being able to access gainful employment.

Marijuana isn't a gateway drugat least not in the sense most people imagine. However, it is a gateway for Black people to arrests, incarceration, and death and defamation at the hands of the state.

The good news is, the vast majority of Americans agree that the War on Drugs has been an abject, spectacular failure. And though these highly polarized times mean it's rare to find an issue that brings together people of different political persuasions, when it comes to dismantling the drug war well, there's an angle for everyone.

Libertarians can focus on the conflict's role in the expansion of civil asset forfeiture . Conservative commentators should speak up about the civil liberties violations associated with racially biased and pre-textural stops.

Good governance groups should look into claims that the Department of Justice is devoting most of its resources to advancing Bill Barr's personal drug-related vendetta. Criminal justice-minded reformers can focus on claims that cities have ceased arrest quotas and "stops and frisks". After all, police departments continue to collect billions in taxpayer dollars that are directly tied to the number of drug-related arrests.

Even the most dispassionate observer should be concerned about tanks given to police departments by the Department of Defense for counternarcotics operations parading down small town streets.

And for those who cite the 'will of the people" to justify their inaction? 91% of American adults are fed up with our current approach to drug policy.

To be clear, drug policy reform will not end the over-policing of Black communities or eliminate the racial inequities embedded in American society. It alone will not eliminate state-sanctioned violence. Nor will it reverse the devastating and disproportionate harms of the War on Drugs.

Butif done thoughtfully, with a focus on public healtha more humane and equitable approach to drug policy will pull millions of people out of a penal system that marks them for life. It will help people get the help they need, while simultaneously reducing the unnecessary and unjust harassment of (predominantly Black and brown) communities.

It will help change a culture that for too long has looked to drug use to justify mass incarceration, police violence and death at the hands of the state. It's not a panacea, but it is a worthwhile start.

Natalie Papillion is the Founder and Executive Director of The Equity Organization, a national not-for-profit organization working towards a more just, effective and equitable approach to drug policy and criminal justice. She is also the author of the forthcoming "Reefer Madness: The Roots of Drug Prohibition in America," a history of drug policy in the early twentieth century.

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It's finally time to defund the drug war - Business Insider - Business Insider

PROGRAMMES by the United States Agency for International Development that are geared toward decreasing the quantity of opium poppy crops in Afghanistan have, in actuality, fostered growth in production of the narcotic, states a quarterly report from the special inspector seneral for Afghanistan reconstruction that was presented to the US Congress. In addition, the document refutes proclamations made by American officials that opium poppy is chiefly grown in areas under control by the Taliban movement [an organisation that is forbidden in the Russian Federation]. According to experts, by turning a blind eye to drug trafficking American military service personnel can buy loyalty from the local elite.

And that does correspond to reality. Otherwise, how can it be explained that a report from the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, which is a US government agency, states that from 2002 to March 2017 the US wasted $8.5 billion on efforts to eradicate the narcotics threat in Afghanistan, yet never managed to fulfil the objective that was set, and Afghanistan remains the largest opium producer in the world and one that is more and more actively filling demand not only in European markets for drugs, but in the American one. Heroin is a multi-billion dollar business, backed by the interests of powerful circles in the United States. From this it becomes evident that one of the goals for the occupation of Afghanistan was to restore the drug trafficking that was under their control back to its former level, and to assume complete control over drug delivery routes. In 2001, under the Taliban, 185 tonnes of opium was produced, whereas now, even given incomplete data, opium production has risen to 13,000 tonnes!

It would be beneficial to remember the history of drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle, which is closely connected to operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the area when the limited contingent of Soviet forces was brought into Afghanistan. Back then, the production of opium in Afghanistan and Pakistan was oriented toward minor regional markets and heroin was not produced there at all. The Afghan narco-economy then became a project that was meticulously developed by the CIA as a component of US foreign policy. Just as before, during the Iran-Contra affair, supporting both the Afghan mujahedeen and other forces friendly to Washington was financed specifically by these narco-dollars. This dirty money was converted into clandestine money through banks in the Middle East and CIA shell companies, and was used to support criminal groups led by American instructors that fought against Soviet soldiers, and then successfully fragmented Afghanistan. Since the United States wanted to deliver Stinger missiles and other armaments to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, they needed help from Pakistan. By the middle of the 1980s, the CIA field office in Islamabad was one of the largest in the world The US turned a blind eye to drug trafficking in Pakistan, and especially in Afghanistan, writes Time magazine.

Afghan history researcher Alfred McCoy affirms that soon after the start of the CIA operation in Afghanistan the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border became the largest heroin producer in the world, and from there 60 per cent of the demand in the United States was met. In Pakistan itself, the number of drug addicts grew from almost zero in 1979 to 1.5 million, which is faster growth than in any other country.

The drug trade, as obvious facts can attest to, was completely controlled by CIA officers. When the mujahedeen captured an area of land in Afghanistan, they made peasants plant opium poppy as a tax for the revolution. On the other side of the border, in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates sponsored by both the Pakistani intelligence services and the CIA controlled hundreds of laboratories that produced heroin. Over decades of active drug business in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Drug Enforcement Agency regional office has never seized one large shipment of heroin, nor has is made a single arrest!

According to McCoy, officials with the latest administration in Washington refused to investigate the accusations of drug trafficking levelled at their Afghan allies, since US drug policy in Afghanistan was always subordinate to the interests of fighting against Soviet, and now Russian, influence. Charles Cogan, a former CIA operations leader in Afghanistan, quite truthfully and cynically told the world about this when he admitted that the CIA sacrificed the war on drugs in favour of winning the Cold War. He says that the main objective was to inflict as much damage as possible on the Soviet Union. The role played by the CIA, even though it is expressed in many documents, is not mentioned in materials from the United Nations, which place an emphasis on internal factors. Laundered narco-dollars were used by Washington to finance the mujahedeen, and terrorists in Central Asia and the Balkans.

According to an assessment done by the UN, the global drug trade reaches several, if not dozens of, billions of dollars. The opium sold from Afghanistan amounts to a considerable portion of this trade. It is evident that the lions share of the proceeds from drug trafficking cannot be taken in by terrorist groups, as the UN affirms. Major business and financial interests back those narcotics. In that regard, geopolitical and military control over those channels of distribution for the drugs holds as much significance as control over oilfields and oil pipelines.

What sets drugs apart from legal products is that drug trafficking is an important source of income not only for organised crime groups, but for the US intelligence services, which are becoming an even more important player in banks and financial institutions. This means that the American intelligence services and large syndicates that have ties to organised crime compete for strategic control over drug distribution channels. The multi-billion dollar income from drug trafficking is invested into Western banking systems, and above all else into American banks. Most large transnational banks, via their offshore branches, launder a substantial amount of drug money. This trade can flourish only if the main players have highly-placed political patrons in the West and in Afghanistan itself.

There are many specific examples that bear witness, and quite vividly, to the fact that at present a considerable number of Americans in the US itself, and military service personnel in Afghanistan, are not interested in the war on drugs, but in supporting the drug trade. Even though a major portion of American chemical weapons programmes remain classified, it is apparent that much attention has been given to doing research on drug supplements that can boost the performance of military personnel. For example, in the US air force pilots were given dextroamphetamines before long missions to increase their ability to concentrate and reduce fatigue. And out of the American pilots that participated in operation Desert Storm in the war against Iraq in 2003, 65 per cent used narcotic stimulants. An investigation of the exercises held in the Tarnak Farms training camp in Afghanistan, during which four Canadian soldiers were killed by friendly fire and another eight were wounded, found that the American F-16 pilots were permitted to use Dexedrine. And there are many more of these kinds of examples. In addition, medicinal products delivered by the Pentagon that contain narcotic substances are now actively being taken by the Saudi pilots that are bombing mostly cities, villages, and inhabited settlements in Yemen.

In the beginning of this year, the Afghan government announced with grandeur that it had arrested five high-level police official complicit in drug trafficking in Kabul and neighbouring countries. Nasrat Rahimi, a representative from the ministry of internal affairs, declared that Ahmad Ahmadi who was in charge of the war on drugs in the countrys capital was arrested while trying to flee the country. He told the press that Ahmadi was one of the countrys leading drug dealers and mafia ringleader who was also the director of a suspicious Afghan-Swiss business group that was, over the course of several years, involved in protecting, promoting the interests of, and receiving large bribes from drug dealers in a city with more than six million people. It is true that later on the Kabul press found out about this ultra-high level of their governments activity. It turned out that the Afghan group was operating independently of the CIA, which completely controls drug trafficking in the country, and refused to pay American officers their commissions.

That is exactly why Moscow accuses the US and NATO of not being capable of stopping the flow of Afghan drugs moving into Central Asia and Russia. Washington tries to implement a policy of reinforcing measures to conduct the war on drugs in the region without launching any operations against the insurgents. Over the past 10 years, Afghanistan has produced and exported more heroin than any other country. According to an evaluation done by the UN, about 10 per cent of the gross output from Afghanistan originates from growing opium poppy. About 13,000 tonnes of opium was produced in the country, which is estimated to be worth $2 billion. This creates a vicious circle: illegal drug trafficking finances the Taliban, the CIA controls that and takes action to undermine and hinder Afghan authorities attempts to stamp out opium cultivation and come up with a method to obtain alternative income.

Trying to shirk responsibility, Washington as is its usual practice publishes rosy reports about the active war against drugs, and at the same time falsely accuses Russia of allegedly cooperating with the Taliban. Zamir Kabulov, a Russian presidential special envoy, sharply refuted the false accusations from the CIA about collusion with the Taliban, underscoring that the US is the country that has joined with the Taliban to play a part in the flourishing drug traffic out of Afghanistan, adding that the US paid numerous bribes to implement several drug-related projects in Afghanistan. He also emphasised that American aircraft can fly out of Kandahar and Bagram to anywhere, including Germany and Romania, without going through an inspection. This means that the Americans, without any form of control, transport huge shipments of drugs into Europe, and then to the US, earning criminal money on the spilled blood of the Afghan people.

New Eastern Outlook, July 15. Victor Mikhin is a member-correspondent of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

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The US 'war' on drugs - newagebd.net

Friday, July 17, 2020 6:17 a.m. EDT by Thomson Reuters

By Karen Lema

MANILA (Reuters) - At the peak of the Philippines' war on drugs, people in the rundown neighbourhoods of Navotas in the capital Manila grew used to police knocking on doors, or bursting into the homes of drug suspects - who often wound up dead.

Now, many residents of the Navotas area, which has been particularly badly hit by the coronavirus, fear another harsh police campaign after the government said officials will visit homes of patients with mild or no symptoms and escort them to isolation centres.

Some Filipinos have labelled the plan "Tokhang 2", calling it the sequel to a police-led anti-drug campaign that became synonymous with thousands of killings.

"We are afraid of the house-to-house. We don't know what the police and soldiers will do to us," said Crisanto dela Cruz, a 46-year-old pedicab driver in Navotas.

"At the same time, we are afraid of getting infected because we are always outside."

Infections have tripled in the Philippines since June 1 and the interior ministry announced this week that health officials, with the help of local authorities and the police, will move people suffering from COVID-19 from their homes to isolation centres. It has urged neighbours to report potential cases of infected people who are evading authorities.

President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman, Harry Roque, stressed the home visits will be led by local health workers.

In a statement, he said "police presence is merely to provide support or assistance in the transport of patients".

But Roque also said anyone likely to spread the virus could be forcibly removed "if need be".

"We can still compel them but I don't think it will be in the nature as if they are being treated as criminals", he told CNN Philippines.

The United Nations has said at least 8,663 people, and possibly many more, were killed in the Philippines after Duterte launched a war on drugs in 2016. It said the killings took place amid "near impunity" for police and incitement to violence by top officials.

Most of the deaths were in poor, run-down areas like those in Navotas.

Police say their actions in the anti-drug campaign have been lawful and that deaths occurred in shootouts with dealers resisting arrest.

The coronavirus strategy was announced in a week when the Philippines recorded Southeast Asia's biggest daily jump in deaths from the disease.

While much of East Asia appears to have COVID-19 under control, the Philippines has recorded nearly 36% of its infections and 23% of its 1,660 deaths in the past two weeks. In the region, only Indonesia's death toll is climbing faster.

'FASCIST ACTIONS'

The government has defended the house-to-house approach, saying that infected people with insufficient space to quarantine themselves at home should be moved to isolation centres.

But opposition senators and human rights groups say the campaign is from the playbook of the drug war.

Senator Franklin Drilon said police had been enforcing a lockdown aggressively, and there was no need for "fascist actions to demand submission".

The National Union of People's Lawyers called it "another tool to sow fear in our communities".

"With a government that has emboldened its own uniformed personnel to violate human rights with impunity, how can we be sure that the police will not abuse this new power," it said.

A better approach, say critics, is to improve contact-tracing and testing, with just 0.9% of the population tested so far. Roughly two-thirds of the tests followed the relaxation of restrictions on June 1 to try to rescue the economy.

Navotas has since seen cases grow from 286 at end May to 906 as of July 16, prompting authorities to reimpose restrictions, with armed police in camouflage deployed to keep people indoors and threaten violators with fines.

"It's not martial law, there's no need for police to go house-to-house," said Arvin Provito, a Navotas tricycle driver.

"What they should do is do house-to-house testing."

Former health minister Esperanza Cabral said the government should rethink its approach.

"As they say, give a carpenter a hammer and all he will see are nails," she said. "As for the people, they've been so used to being treated as nails they're naturally scared of anyone who has a hammer."

(Additional reporting by Adrian Portugal, Eloisa Lopez and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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As Philippines fights coronavirus, some fear involvement of the police - WTVB News

Vigilantes say they have no alternative but to take the matter into their own hands

Jul 18th 2020

UNDER COVER of darkness, one night in 2017, Seng Naw and some 150 like-minded men revved up their trucks and drove a couple of miles from the town of Mohnyin in Kachin state, in remote northern Myanmar. Where the rice paddies give way to forest and mountains they found something that resembled a festival, according to Mr Seng Naw: scores of youths lolling about, high on heroin and methamphetamine sold to them by several dealers on the scene. It was 4am or thereabouts, by which time Mr Seng Naw knew the junkies would be too far gone to put up a fight, though some of his crew had brought clubs just in case. They rounded up the group96 users and four dealerspacked them into the trucks and deposited them at the towns police station.

That was Mr Seng Naws biggest haul. He is vice-president of the Mohnyin branch of Pat Jasan, a vigilante group trying to stamp out drugs. It was founded in 2014 by several prominent Kachins, a largely Christian ethnic group, who were dismayed by the havoc drugs had brought to their community. In Mohnyin, Mr Seng Naw says, people would regularly use drugs in public: on streets, in paddyfields, at university, even in a cemetery. As the number of addicts in Kachin state soared, so did violent crime, says Hpala Lum Hkao, a Baptist pastor and Pat Jasans secretary-general. The government could not, or would not, tackle the crisis. So they decided to pat jasansweep and clean.

There are no reliable data on the number of addicts in Myanmar, but the Transnational Institute, an international research outfit, believes the problem is severe. The official tally of injecting drug users has risen steadily over the past decade, to 93,000. But in the past five years methamphetamine, which is typically heated and the fumes inhaled, has supplanted heroin as a drug of concern, according to the government. It is cheap and readily available. Mai Kaung Saing, a journalist who reports on northern Shan state, which borders Kachin state (see map), estimates that 30% of the local population uses drugs, primarily heroin and meth. The problem is national. Every family has been affected by drug-use issues, says Tom Kramer of the Transnational Institute.

The surge in addiction is a symptom of the countrys central role in the drug trade. For decades assorted militias, some almost completely autonomous and others at war with the government, have controlled much of Myanmars border regions, especially in Shan and Kachin states. Many of the gunmen, and some of the soldiers sent to fight them, are involved in the drug trade. In the 1970s and 1980s Myanmar became the worlds biggest source of opium and heroin, and remains the second-biggest producer today. In 2018 sales of illegal opiates accounted for 1-2% of its GDP, according to the UN.

Since the 1990s Myanmar has also been producing meth which, like heroin, was initially intended for export. Gradually, however, as supply has increased and prices have declined, a domestic market has emerged. In Lashio, a city in northern Shan state, four yaba (meth) tablets can be bought for about $0.75. Many users find meth helps them work long hours or in arduous conditions, as truck drivers or miners; others are young and bored.

The International Crisis Group, an NGO based in Brussels, reckons the drug trade contributes more than any other industry to Shan states economy. In eastern and northern Shan state, people get paid in yaba, they trade in yaba, says David Mathieson, an analyst. So when vigilante groups like Pat Jasan cracked down in 2015 and 2016, it depressed the local economy.

The authorities have little incentive to tackle the trade. Police rarely pursue drug-traffickers. Sometimes they are users and dealers themselves: members of Pat Jasan have on several occasions inadvertently arrested officers, says Mr Hpala Lum Hkao. Sometimes they are simply too scared to arrest anyone but small-time dealers, says Mr Mai Kaung Saing. Some of the militias in drug-producing areas are even more deeply steeped in the trade, either providing protection to drug rings or running them themselves.

Kachins like Mr Seng Naw have refused to stand idle as their community becomes hooked. Pat Jasan, which claims to have 10,000 volunteers at its beck and call, is the biggest, most organised vigilante group in Myanmar, and has a lot of energy, according to Mr Kramer. It says it has destroyed 3,000-4,000 hectares of poppy fields, launched numerous campaigns to educate people about the harms of drugs, and arrested dealers and users, some of whom have ended up in their rehabilitation centres. Mr Hpala Lum Hkao says the group has opened 77 in total, though some have since closed down. Treatment consists of prayer, physical activity and the odd bath to dull the pain of withdrawal. Addicts there against their will are sometimes placed in stocks or shackled for the first few days, to ensure they do not escape.

This punitive approach to treating addiction is the norm in Myanmar, says Mr Kramer, even though it is highly ineffective: around 80% of those forced into treatment will relapse. Even Mr Hpala Lum Hkao concedes that once the inmates have been released from Pat Jasans centres, they frequently fall back into their old habits. Some officials are coming round to the idea that there are more humane and effective methods of treating addiction, says Mr Kramer. But curing addiction in Myanmar will take more than an evidence-based approach to treatment. It will involve ending the long civil war in Kachin and Shan states and stemming the flood of drugs. Until then, Messrs Hpala Lum Hkao and Seng Naw will remain on high alert.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Myanmar vice"

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Illegal drugs have become deeply rooted in Burmese society - The Economist

Kimberl Crenshaw is a professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School. She has developed Black feminist legal theory and was named one of the top critical thinkers in the world by Prospect magazine in 2019. Based in Los Angeles, Crenshaw is the co-founder and executive director of The African American Policy Forum (AAPF), and creator of the 2014 #SayHerName social media campaign. The online effort is to raise awareness of Black women who are victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence. She hosts a podcast called Intersectionality Matters! and moderates Under The Blacklight, an AAPF webinar series to expound upon both the coronavirus pandemic and anti-Black racism.

This is the seventh part of a series wherecivil rights leaders, cultural influencers, advocatesand critical thinkersexplain race relations, societal change, community protest and the political awakening happening in the United States following the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and other Black Americans.The group, including NAACP President Derrick Johnson and #OscarsSoWhite Creator April Reign, pose their thoughts on race relations during the summer of 2020 and how America may move forward less divided. Join the conversation on social media using #PassTheMic.

Social justice means building a world where everyone can breathe

Q: How would you describe the civic unrest occurring in America right now?

A: This summer we have all borne witness to the utter expendability of Black life. The disproportionate economic and biological toll that COVID has extracted from Black communities has made the nation confront the realities of structural racism in America. The targeted lethality of police violence literally suffocating Black life has made silence untenable. And in this moment of peril and possibility, in this red summer of 2020, Black communities have risen up to shatter the silence that has hidden the disposability of Black life that is both horrific and completely banal in the United States.

Q: Is this a fleeting moment or have we reached an inflection point where lasting change is possible?

A: On the next episode of my series Under The Blacklight were going to ask this very question. I think it is perhaps the question of the moment. Whats been laid bare in recent months is that Black communities ravaged by the threat of a pandemic, by the economic abandonment from a federal government that will not prioritize their survival, and by the relentless policing and brutalizing of their kin seeking to shatter the status quo. And yet, were back to square one when it comes to integrating color-consciousness into our collective discourse. Is the discourse just behind reality? Or have our politics moved on?

Q: Is there another moment in history that relates to the moment we are living through now?

A: This summer has been a long time coming. It has roots in the war on drugs, racial profiling, paramilitary policing in Black neighborhoods, permissive use of lethal force by law enforcement, implicit and explicit bias in policing, in police-sourced solutions to mental health and chemical dependence and other social problems that all combine to produce the disposability of Black life. In that way, it has a lot in common with the Long Hot Summer of 1967, the first time we heard the phrase When the looting starts, the shooting starts. Then, like now, deeply entrenched racial inequality resulted in an outpouring of emotion and activism all over the country.

A civil rights activist, attorney and writer explain race relations, societal change and the political awakening happening in the United States following the tragic death of George Floyd. When it comes to race, systemic problems have plagued the nation for not only decades, but for centuries, says Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The summer of 2020 is proving to be a moment for multiracial coalitions to come together, according to Fatima Goss Graves, TIMES UP Legal Defense Fund co-founder and National Womens Law Center president and chief executive officer. Bestselling author George Johnson explains the revolution is being televised.

Q: What specifically needs to happen for Black lives to matter in the United States?

A: We know that where a problem isnt fully seen, it cannot be fully solved. So first, we need to understand how deeply anti-Blackness is embedded in our systems of governance, especially in our criminal justice system. Most immediately, the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies support the Justice in Policing Act as an important first step in overhauling policing in the United States. We are also asking that any actions taken now reflect a fully intersectional lens. Based on the lived realities of Black women who have been assaulted and killed at the hands of law enforcement, we demand investment in community-based practices of public safety; an end to qualified immunity; mechanisms to address the sexual violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers; and a federal registry of police misconduct.

But all of this is a first step in rethinking the relationship between our systems of governance and Black lives.

Q: What does social justice mean to you personally and why should others care?

A: Social justice means building a world where everyone can breathe. Building an intersectional movement means building a movement where no one falls through the cracks, where everyone is seen and counted and taken care of. Social justice means reckoning with our national inheritance: 400 years of anti-blackness and misogyny and heteropatriarchy. We are all implicated in these structures, as victims, as perpetrators, and more often than not, as both. But we dont have to be complicit, we can all find a way to begin dismantling these structures at every scale.

Q: What solutions will heal racial divisions and disparities?

A: Based on the lived experience of Black women harassed, assaulted, and killed by law enforcement, and listening to the voices of their families and loved ones, we know that racial divisions cannot be addressed until we transform American policing. Black people are overexposed to police, and that overexposure results in a heightened risk of trauma and death at the hands of police. Our goal must be to reduce the exposure of all Black people to police as a first step in creating a society that affirms that yes, Black lives matter to our nation.

Q: How do you feel about the future?

A: I am thinking of a tweet that Mariame Kaba, an important thinker in these times and a prison abolitionist, sometimes posts at the end of a long day. May Tomorrow Bring Us More Justice and Some Peace.

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Kimberl Crenshaw Wants to Build a Movement Where Everyone Is Seen' - NBC10 Boston