Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Demonstrators calling to defund the Minneapolis Police Department march on University Avenue on June 6, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen / Getty Images

After a year of upheaval and pandemic, and the unlikely conviction of a police officer, Minneapolis organizers Jonathan Stegall and D.A. Bullock talk with Truthouts Kelly Hayes about what they have built and learned in the last year, what Derek Chauvins conviction does not accomplish, and what they hope people will do now as the struggle against policing continues.

Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to Movement Memos, a Truthout podcast about things you should know, if you want to change the world. Im your host, Kelly Hayes.

One day after a jury in Minneapolis found Derek Chauvin guilty of the murder of George Floyd, officials in Washington were expressing relief that the convictions have lessened pressure for change, according to a report in Axios. Relieved Republican and Democratic officials privately acknowledged that an acquittal could have led to another wave of mass protest and created bipartisan pressure for police reform. Even those in Washington who are still enthusiastic about reform are pushing legislation like the George Floyd Act, which, as author and attorney Derecka Purnell has pointed out, would not have saved George Floyds life. The bill would, instead, direct $750 million in federal funding to local police departments, to better investigate the murders they commit. In the grand tradition of police reform in the United States, the bill would offer more guidelines to ignore, more funding to exploit, and more legitimacy for a fundamentally racist and murderous institution.

Order is the primary concern of this government, which is why officials reliably conflate order with words like justice and safety. Sadly, decades of reform have only made injustice and the violent disposal of human beings more efficient and sophisticated, and more richly funded.

Fortunately, activists at the local level are offering a different vision, including in Minneapolis, where efforts to divert funding from the police department, in favor of life-giving services, significantly predate last summers protests. Those efforts saw a surge in support in the last year, as local organizers with groups like Reclaim the Block grappled with the realities of upheaval and the pandemic, the complications of visibility, and the pursuit of the long term goal of redirecting funds from the Minneapolis Police Department. In December, they saw a major victory when the Minneapolis City Council voted to cut $8 million from the citys $170 million police budget and divert the funds to mental health and violence prevention. This was a major victory for the movement to defund police, and the product of fierce and committed organizing. So what can we learn from what they accomplished?

In todays episode, we will be hearing from two organizers with Reclaim the Block, a grassroots coalition that has been pressuring the city of Minneapolis to divest from policing and invest in alternatives since 2018. Those organizers, Jonathan Stegall and D.A. Bullock, will share their reflections on the verdict, and their journey during the last year, and talk about what they hope will happen next. I was able to speak with Jonathan and D.A. only a couple of days after the verdict last week, and I am grateful they were able to make the time, amid everything theyve been up against. I hope you all will hear what they have to say, and contemplate what we need to do in the coming days and weeks, because officials are counting on our complacency. They are betting that this verdict will slow our momentum and quiet our cries for justice. But what happens next isnt up to them. Its up to us.

[musical interlude]

KH: Todays guests are Minneapolis organizers Jonathan Stegall and D.A. Bullock. Jonathan is a designer, a coder, and a faith-rooted organizer and abolitionist. He is a core team member of Reclaim the Block; and a board member of the Center for Prophetic Imagination, an organization that integrates spiritual formation, political action, and education. D.A. Bullock is a writer, an award winning filmmaker, and a member of the Reclaim the Block communications team. Jonathan and D.A., thanks so much for joining us today.

Jonathan Stegall: Thank you for having us.

D.A. Bullock: Yes. Thank you.

KH: So this has been a momentous week. How are you both doing?

DAB: Im feeling, I still feel the tension of the moment. I know we had a lot of ebb and flow, so Im literally sitting in a studio across the street from Daunte Wrights funeral. So Im also feeling a great deal of weight around that.

JS: Yeah. I resonate with that and Im doing, you know, Im doing okay. My daughter has been home the last couple of days because Minneapolis closed the public schools, or moved the public schools to virtual learning at home, so Ive been dealing with that. And then just the weird tension of how everybody wants to feel in the city and how different everyones feelings are and, you know, wanting to validate those but also, as Mariame [Kaba] says, abolition is not about our feelings.

KH: And yet they are important.

JS: Yes.

KH: I do want to ask how your team and your community are doing, in the wake of the Chauvin verdict. I know this has been a heavy time, and that while a lot of people are satisfied with the outcome of the trial, theres still a lot of complexity, grief and unaddressed harm to work through, not to mention exhaustion.

DAB: Yeah. I think were still resolute and really focused on the ultimate goal and know that there is quite a bit of work to do, and quite a bit of work to do in the short term and the term. So I feel like our team is certainly focused, but Ive found that I think the community at large is still focused as well, which I think is encouraging.

JS: Yeah, I think thats true. I feel like, you know, for us as a group, I think that having kind of abolitionist values at our core, it gives us something to hold on to, I think, that at least I dont think I would have otherwise in these types of moments.

KH: Well, I am so glad that you all have each other and that your community has groups like Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective, who are attending to this moment. Now, I want to briefly take us back in time, because I want to talk about where we go from here, but to do that, I think people need to understand a little bit more about the journey you all have been on. I know Reclaim the Block kicked off its work back in 2018, organizing to move money from the Minneapolis police department into other areas of the citys budget. And I know you all had some success with that in 2019, when the City Council voted to move $242,000 from the police budget and into the Office of Violence Prevention, which is a broad-reaching office that has the ability to fund community services in the name of violence prevention. Then, when the pandemic hit, I know you joined with other abolitionist organizations like The Red Nation, Black Visions Collective who I know are a major anchor for you all, Survived and Punished, and the National Lawyers Guild, and many others, in endorsing a platform created by Critical Resistance, that I think everyone should check out, thats called an Abolitionist Platform Toward Healthy Communities Now and Beyond COVID-19. So this was a time when many of us were trying to adapt our organizing, to make demands that made sense for our communities, amid a pandemic, to get mutual aid off the ground, and then George Floyds murder was caught on film, and there was an uprising in your community, and people across the country also felt called to action. And in the middle of that, as people were trying to figure out how to join in or show support, a whole lot of people were suddenly looking to you all. Can you say a bit about what that was like?

JS: Yeah, we had a lot of visibility at that point. And then we made some demands, like, Hey, City Council, youre gonna make a budget cut from the pandemic and your police department just killed George Floyd in front of the world. Lets take some money out of that police budget again. And you know, we released a set of demands, we did a I dont even remember what kind of direct action small thing. And then the city just, as you know, it kind of arose around us. And, you know, we werent organizing direct actions en masse at that point. A lot of us were out in the streets with our community, but we werent doing that type of organizing; we were trying to push the City Council and trying to figure out what kind of things we could win in an abolitionist lens at that point. But just being in that contest, we think, made that demand to defund MPD, to abolish MPD, stick in a way that it hadnt in previous you know, certainly George Floyd wasnt the first person MPD has publicly killed. And it wasnt the first time that people have risen up in significant ways, but the demand has always been something different.

And so that was how things really shifted for us, at that point. We got a lot of local attention, a lot of national attention, a lot of donations and resources, and we had to figure out what to do with those things and how to, I think, how to handle those things in ways that were in accordance with our values. And then we had to figure out, are we going to hire people or whatever, how are we going to do that? How are we going to become something other than this group of, you know, 10 to 15 or however many people sitting in the living room into something else?

DAB: Yeah, and I would say, you know, for me, it was before I was officially part of the team. So during that time I was still relying, because Im a filmmaker first and foremost, I was using a story-based strategy to sort of bring people along in political education about the possibility of defunding our police department and the ultimate possibility of abolition. But bringing people along through story form and relying a lot on sort of the activity and information that Reclaim the Block was putting out and Black Visions was putting out and developing a sensibility, you know, a story sensibility in the city itself, not necessarily knowing that something would happen like this, but kind of knowing that something would happen like this, just because we have a really distinct history of seeing police violence play out in a really dramatic way within our communities. So, I think, you know, a lot of my work being a storyteller was about tying those stories together, those histories, those past stories together, but also, you know, tying that to the imagination of what was possible. And I think that was feeding into a lot of the work that was going on before George Floyd was killed. And I think that was part of the thing that made the spark so instantaneous, that made it so combustible, that made it so powerful, that, you know, people were ready to go in the streets and make themselves heard. And I think thats a powerful thing that was happening around the country, but it was certainly happening here.

KH: And all of this, of course, happening amid the pandemic, which had created a huge need for mutual aid and organizing specific to that crisis as well. So having been vouched for online by a number of abolitionist groups, you all saw a lot of donations. How did you all handle getting that influx of resources at such a time of great need? And how did you decide how to disperse and deploy those resources?

JS: Yeah, at first, I dont think any of us expected any of that, anything like that to happen. And so, you know, it took us to, I think, a couple of weeks, and then we were like, We should turn off our donation link. And so we turned off all of our donation links and we made a list of local places that we wanted people to donate to instead. That was kind of the first, I think the first action that we took and we put, I think at least we tried to focus a lot on, you know, people that were doing emergency crisis response right in that time period. Some of them would be protest support groups. Some of them were helping Black businesses recover, and anything in between really. Whether we ideologically agree with them or not, we put them on the list if they were doing direct mutual aid or relief support. And that link, you know, it was just a Google Doc. [Editors note: An updated version of that document can be found here]. We didnt make a website before we got internet famous. And so we just made a Google Doc and it kind of got everywhere. It was on the daily show. Trevor Noah said it, it got a lot of attention and we dont know anything, certainly dont know what people got out of it, but we put it out there as much as we could.

And then we started, you know, trying to make a plan for what to do with the money that we had and how to be accountable with it. And you know, we worked with Black Visions, you know. The way it worked was all of the money was kind of separate buckets, but it ultimately went to the same fiscal sponsor that Black Visions has. And so we made kind of an immediate term plan to just give away mutual aid requests to anybody I mean, first come first serve basically to people who needed, especially if it was from things that happened during the uprising or I guess pandemic related. And I dont remember exactly how much we distributed from that. It was more than a million dollars within a few weeks, maybe a month.

KH: And at that point, as I understand it, Black Visions Collective partnered with the non-profit Nexus to create the Transformative Black Led Movement Fund to determine how to distribute $3.1 million that your groups had raised to Black people and Black-led groups in Minneapolis, and I was really moved, when I learned about this process, because I have seen what happens, many times, in these sort of highly energetic movement moments, where the public becomes passionate, and a lot of donations come in, and the money gets concentrated in one or two places. And there are always questions among people in communities about where it should go, and how it should be deconsolidated. Oftentimes, the money does not get deconsolidated, and some organizations just wind up with very large sums of money, while other groups, that people maybe hadnt heard about, dont get funding. And sometimes, money does get redistributed, but only after a lot of extended drama, and on very acrimonious terms. What you all did here, and the process that Black Visions sort of co-led here, of creating a container for decisions about a just redistribution, led by Black people, without any gatekeeping from your group, I just find it very powerful.

DAB: Yeah. And I was on the committee that was formed out of just community members, Black community members who were willing to come together and sort of talk about how we its basically how we would do philanthropy if we just had money at our disposal. And that was what the committee was. And that was actually my first sort of teaming or partnering with Reclaim the Block and Black Visions. And so I saw it from a community member standpoint, was this extraordinary opportunity to just give away money, like to really give it directly to folks and not have them jumping through hoops. A great, I dont even know if it was, about half of the money, or close to half of the money was direct mutual aid, again to anyone who needed it, especially around issues around the uprising. And so, you know, I think it was like a real time ability for us as members of the Black community to create our own sort of redistribution of resources. And, you know, it was extraordinary. Ive never been a part of anything quite like that before in my lifetime. And they actually made me think about a lot of the ways that the philanthropic and non-profit industry are built in Black communities, where they keep you beholden to a certain way of accessing resources and continually having to go back to that ask, and refining that ask, and making yourself worthy and all those kinds of things, whereas this was really just about seeing each other as neighbors, as community members and saying like, What do you need? What do you need to be whole, and lets try to do our best to take care of that.

KH: Well, I hope other groups are paying attention to that experiment, and that we see more experiments like it in these moments. I was also really impressed with Reclaim the Blocks train the trainers effort around your most recent budget battle to reduce the Minneapolis Police Department budget. Can you say a bit about that effort?

JS: We were just like, If youre a group, you know, whether youre official in some way or not, you want to come to these things? You know, well train you on how to testify for budget demands that you have that align with ours. How do you get your people to show up to these hearings, especially since theyre virtual? How do you get around the accessibility barriers that may exist? And how do you craft a testimony so that you dont get cut off in the middle of a call or whatever? Just trying to bring people into that process in a way that made it transparent and accessible, as much as we could. And also, from that, at least my understanding was, we also used a lot of those connections to build, last year we called it The Peoples Budget. And that was kind of what we were having people testifying in favor of. And our hope for the 2021 budget was that the city would adopt that. And it was, I dont know, it was probably a $50 million MPD cut, and we worked together with those other folks to decide where that money would go. And, you know, of course we didnt get that. That was our big push. And then the city ended up taking $8 million or whatever it was.

But that was kind of how we built, how we did those train the trainers. We would hold them over Zoom, then people would come and we teach them how to support those things and how to craft their own demands and then kind of ultimately, hopefully bring them back into what we were all advocating for together.

DAB: And I would say, you know, I think its resonant because its a simple iterative process, meaning like the steps to get involved, whether you have been doing this work forever, or it just came across your consciousness, you can plug into it and be assured that, you know, you can feel strongly about your sense of how you want to express yourself and how you want to do that engagement process with the city. Cause I think thats been one of the impediments of normal everyday residents just getting involved is they feel like its all something that happens over there with experts and lobbyists and people who know what theyre doing. And I would say, you know, even from my own personal experience, it wasnt any of that. It was very accessible. It was very much like, Yeah, this is easy for me to plug into, and then its easy for me to even evolve it to fit, sort of the way I want to make my own statement and that kind of thing, so.

JS: And then from there, our hope was that those organizations that came, you know, have sent representatives to those trainings we did, would take it back to their bases, you know the, lets say tools. And even Black Visions would take up to their larger base. And the SURJ Chapter would take it to the larger base and, you know, the various, whatever organizations would come would bring that information to their bases and make it more accessible to those folks.

KH: I love that. And I love that you all were arming people up with a skill that can continue to be unpacked in various fights and in various efforts that folks will be enacting in your city. I just think thats beautiful. And in this case, you all saw a huge victory, with the City Council voting in December to divert nearly $8 million from the proposed police budget, toward the citys Office of Violence Prevention, which is just such a phenomenal win, and I am looking forward to seeing how that plays out.

Circling back to the moment were in, theres been a lot of talk about how this verdict was not justice. Some people are saying its not justice, but it is accountability, and I strongly disagree with that because accountability is active and participatory, and even potentially transformational, and I dont think we should pretend the state offers people that via the carceral system. We offer people that, when we organize peace circles and other processes and containers for accountability in our communities, and I think its dangerous anytime we allow the state to co-opt the work we do in community, and claim that restoration, or transformation, or accountability is what they are offering us, when they cage, punish and surveil people. I think thats dangerous. Because those co-options are real, and they have real world consequences, and they will take us up on the opportunity to co-opt every time. What we have here, to whatever extent it plays out, is punishment. And people have varying opinions about how valuable or satisfying that is people may find solace in it but we seem to have consensus among like-minded people that this punishment is not justice, and that justice is what the public deserves, so what does justice look like?

JS: You want to go first D.A.?

DAB: Oh, sure. So, you know, Ive been talking to a lot of people who are not very well versed in this movement. So, you know, they dont necessarily parse terms, but I kind of break it down in a common sense way and ask them what justice looks like to them. And Im talking about people who live in my neighborhood. Im talking about other Black folks that Ive been having this conversation with. And the thing that comes up for them time and time again is, I want a guarantee that this will never happen to me, my son, to anybody I know, anybody that looks like me, ever again. And then, you know, ultimately we walk down that path and come to the conclusion that the only way we can guarantee justice is to remove ourselves from this entire system as it exists right now. And so a couple of things happen in those conversations for me and for the person Im having that conversation with is, it becomes more of a logical step and its not a radical, sort of, unimaginable thing. Its actually the logical step toward what we want, which is justice, which is we dont want to deal with this police system. We dont want to be a victim of it ever again, which means we cannot interact with it. We cannot try to figure out a way to work with it around the margins and make it marginally different. We have to remove ourselves from that system and, you know, then we start to think about, like all the ways that carceral system, or that police system, is intertwined into our lives and thinking about all the ways that really influences our quality of life.

So I think, you know, terms like justice, I think, because theyre used so much by the system, we have a criminal justice system. I try to move away from them almost immediately anyway, and start talking to people about like, What is your hearts desire about how your son is being raised and hes going to come up? And what do you see for his future? Like, if youre painting the picture of his future, what does that look like? It doesnt look like somebody, some armed person having control over you and him and your movements. It looks like freedom. It looks like ability to thrive. It looks like having all your needs met. It looks like a lot of things, but it never looks like, Yeah, I want to have a slightly better way to call somebody with a gun to come to my house. Somebody I dont know. So thats a long-winded way of saying, I think we all know what real justice looks like, cause were all, you know, human beings living in this social contract. And I think thats where Im generally trying to have most of my conversations, not keeping them really locked in nuances around terminologies. Cause thats where I think people got all in a bunch about defund or abolition or whatever that is. And I, you know, Im having these conversations with people and Im like, Whatever out. Lets not even talk about that. Like, what do you want for your sons future? Tell me, paint the picture for me. And then when they paint that picture for me, Im saying, Yeah, you know what, thats an abolitionists future. Were talking about the same thing. So lets get down to this work of it. So I feel the same way about justice. We know that, you know, my neighbors, we know were not going to find that in any system that exists right now. So we start immediately talking about, Well, what are we building towards?

JS: I really appreciate that a lot, D.A. I think I tend to, I do end up in different conversations and I do end up a lot of times trying to get people to be precise about which thing that it is that theyre talking about, you know. There were a lot of those memes that were like, you know, This isnt justice. This is accountability. And I wanted to kind of, for those folks who are in my life, who are really into that, I wanted to kind of validate that like, you know, a year ago I think a lot more people would have said, Oh, we got some justice. And so its not insignificant that they didnt want to use that word for what happened with the verdict. So, I did want to recognize that, but also say, No, that youve kind of just shifted this punishment thing over to the word accountability, and these are three different words that were talking about and thats important. Yeah, I found, obviously, things that you have to say, things that Mariame [Kaba] has to say, super helpful in helping parse through those things. And I think, you know, in my personal conversations, I think a lot of people found that helpful, at least to wrestle with what it is that theyre feeling, you know. What is it that, even if we do feel like punishment is a good thing, what do we do with that information? I dont think most of us like to think of ourselves as punishing people, although we live in a very, we live in a punishment full society. And I think theres a lot of ways we try to cover over that and I wanted to kind of get at that. I feel like Mariame [Kaba] does a really good job at that when she talks about, you know, our community. If we have a set of communal values that are based in justice, then they can hold us up when we cant hold ourselves up. I dont know if those are the exact types of words that she uses, but thats kind of how I hear them.

And so thats kind of how I take it when Im in those conversations. I think, as Reclaim the Block, weve always tried to put forward the idea that justice is when people have things that they need, when they have housing that is safe, that they can afford, when they have a clean environment that they can be in relationship with, when they have worker protection, when theyre not getting wage theft, when they, you know, all the other things that weve often had people organize with us to say, Yes, we would like the money from the police because it will make us safe if we have the things that we build.

And I guess the only other thing I would say is, I dont remember how late into 2020 it was, but we were on a call, a group call, and we were watching, I think it was with Mimi Kim, and we were watching this video that The Intercept had put out, it was called A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair. And, you know, whoever was facilitating was like, Yall, dont get the chance to think very much about 20 years in the future or, you know, further into the future than like, two weeks. And you know, the video was just kind of creating this picture, literally an animated picture, youve probably, maybe seen it, of just like, Heres what happens when, you know, the last prison closes or when the pollinators come back. There were all these images of the world that movements could build. And then we got through, Heres how all the movements got repressed, and heres how they rose up. And heres how the essential workers rose up. You know, and all of these images that were very beautiful, and I literally cried in the Zoom call watching this video. And I think about it often still, when I think about that.

KH: I would agree that its a very positive development, that a lot of people dont consider this verdict justice, and that while a lot of people may have found some solace in this moment, they are not satisfied with this outcome, and I do think thats progress. I also loved what you had to say D.A., because I like the idea of talking to people about what they want, and about what their hearts desire, for their families, for their communities, as a way of centering that conversation, because the word justice is very tied up in punishment and in the system, for a lot of people. And I was just talking with Ruthie Gilmore the other day about how even the word freedom is really mixed up with the system in ways that can be really damaging sometimes. That sometimes we say freedom when what we mean is access to the ability to harm other people in the ways that weve been harmed, or access to forms of state violence being enacted in ways that we want them enacted. So I really like this idea of talking to people about what it is they need, and what it is it would take for people to live freely and safely, and create safety in their communities, and absolutely that calls for abolition.

One thing that I have seen that I find really unfortunate lately is some people using George Floyd as a new standard by which to judge people who are killed by the police. In cases like Adam Toledos, I see people saying, This was not a George Floyd situation. Because the murder of George Floyd, they argue, was a clean cut case of police brutality, and the kind of thing we should all clearly object to, whereas other cases, like Adams, they say, are just the police doing their jobs. We also see that kind of exceptionalization happening among public officials, like Nancy Pelosi, who in the wake of the verdict said, Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice. Now, as many people have pointed out, George Floyd did not sacrifice himself for anything, because he did not choose his fate. It was chosen for him by a cop who murdered him. But this valorization, in my mind, is part of a larger effort to divide the George Floyd case from the everyday violence of policing. And I think they are pushing the idea, as a matter of structural maintenance, that hes not like Adam Toledo, or MaKhia Bryant, or others who are killed by police. Hes a hallowed saint, who sacrificed himself for our sins, allowing us to punish his killer, making our country magically a more just place. What are your thoughts on this exceptionalization we are witnessing?

DAB: I think it plays right into the vast mythological, magical thinking of how people form their vision of what policing actually is versus what it actually practically is, in our lifetime. And what I mean by that is, its easy for people, at this point, to play into the mythology, to play into the magical thinking that, like you said, George Floyd was an exceptional case. Derek Chauvin was an exceptionally evil individual. And then it absolves everybody from really looking at practically, what is right in front of their face. Again, so thats why I always try to bring people back from the theoretical to actually what they actually experienced in their own lifetime, right? I talk to people and ask them all the time like, You think about the times when you were most in peril in your lifetime. And this for me, personally as well, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago and I thought back at the times when I was in peril. I was robbed at gunpoint at one point on the South Side of Chicago.

And at no point, did some heroic figure in a uniform come and save me. So, thats the first stripping down of this mythology and asking ourselves, is there any instance where the introduction of that force has actually been helpful in our lives? Saving us in a time of peril or changing the trajectory of a bad situation. And most often when I talk to people from their personal experience, nobody has ever had that experience of the mythology. Nobodys had the experience of that magical thinking that aligns you with an idea that you need them to come in and make these split second decisions because theyre always under this constant danger, and theyre always facing these extraordinary threats. And then you start to just relate it to, again, the practical nature of what they see in front of them which is mostly police officers who show up after something happens and they tape off the block and they stand around, they kibitz to one another and they get on their phone.

And when you see this, you see this in the community, and you realize all these exceptions that are being made to keep that structure in place are based on a myth. Theyre not based on the reality. Theyre based on a magical thinking that, this thing is somehow valuable, that its going to save your life one day. When actually, its not.

And I think thats a hard thing for people to face when that has just been the standard to believe in the magic, all your life. So, I feel obviously systems use that to their advantage and as self-preservation and were seeing that here. Theres nothing exceptional about the violence that was perpetrated on George Floyd. It happens all the time. In fact, MPD does it all the time. They did it during the trial on tape. MPD officers put their knees on the neck of a resident who was trying to stand up for a houseless encampment, here near where I live. So, I think, if people really took an honest look at the practical way they live their lives and what they see right in front of them, it has to conflict with that magical thinking. It has to conflict with that exceptionalism that is trying to be sold to them.

JS: Yeah, I think thats right. I think weve always tried to use that narrative that what happened at George Floyd is not exceptional. Like D.A. said, MPD does this, all the time. Even the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, wouldnt have saved George Floyd. The things that they think are so exceptional to get rid of, wouldnt have helped him. And this also brings me back. I remember, a few years ago, there was an online conversation around, What if Black Lives Matter as a movement had focused more on Tamir Rice than Michael Brown? Maybe it would have had a better public perception or something. And then, the man who killed Tamir Rice got off as well. Or almost never, has anybody exceptionally enough to make that work unless theres a massive uprising. And then maybe the system will decide, Yeah, we can throw away that one, that cop, even though the practices are not exceptional.

KH: I see the state really trying to reinforce the standards of innocence. During the trial, I remember people making a big deal about how we needed to call it the Chauvin trial and not the George Floyd trial, because it was Derek Chauvin who was on trial and not George Floyd. And I remember thinking like, Yes, lets call it that. But also lets name that George Floyd really is on trial because the victims of police shootings are always on trial. And I dont think we should pretend that the system operates outside that reality. In truth, this society puts people on trial in the news and in popular discourse, the moment they are killed by a cop. Its always a question of whether they were innocent enough to live. Which is appalling because we are usually talking about people who live in a context where they have already been deemed disposable, for the sake of order. Because people do all kinds of things in the disaster zone of late capitalism, like, good, bad, and indifferent.

Some people, like police, get to act with relative impunity. Some people, like affluent white people, get to act with a low degree of consequence. And some people, like Black people, are subject to execution for virtually any offense or even no offense at all. So of course, people living within zones of disposability and organized abandonment are sometimes going to do things that we find troubling, and even cause very real harm.

But when we position the police who enforce the very inequality that generates so much harm as fundamentally legitimate in their actions, unless there is a nine minute and 29 second video of them slowly killing a completely helpless unarmed person, we are maintaining those dynamics. And I dont think we should be structural maintenance workers. I think when people say, But Adam Toledo was running from the cops at 2:00 a.m. and he had been armed that night. I think we should ask, But why? And not let neoliberal mayors like Lori Lightfoot get away with saying things like, The social safety net failed this child, when she is the one refusing to fund that safety net and instead shuffling millions of dollars into the hands of the police department, that killed that child, every chance she gets.

DAB: Absolutely, I couldnt agree more. And it makes me think about, what are our ultimate goals? Is it to have more distinctions between what is so-called justified killings of people or to just not have killings of people, right? I think people need to always be able to take a step back and ask them, when theyre steadily trying to find those, carve out those exceptions for police to continue their activity, Im always asking them, Why? Like, Why do you need them to have a justified reason for killing someone? Like, Why is that your desire? Or is your desire that people are not getting killed anymore? So, there are some distinct choices that we need to make as people who are living together about, like you said, we dont want maintenance of a system where were all at each others throat potentially, mistrusting of one another in a fight for limited things. Right? Is that our desire? Or is our desire that everybodys feeling pretty good about their life, their potential, the things that could happen, theyre feeling hopeful and theyre ready to do things to help one another, and theyre ready to do things to support one another because theyre not in that competition for survival, right? And then ask ourselves, how do the police, what part do they play in that? Do they alleviate and eliminate that dog-eat-dog thing? Or do they exacerbate that? Or maintain it, in order to keep themselves in their position of getting that budget every year? And those questions, theyre pretty straight forward. You dont have to know a lot about the philosophy of, you dont have to know a lot about economics, or a lot of these other things that you may learn in the higher education institutions, to answer common sense questions about how youre living, and why youre making the decisions.

I had a conversation with one of our council members and she had to admit to me that police dont keep us safe. But her admission of that was after a long conversation. And we had to talk through it, and it was begrudgingly, to admit a certain thing that was pretty much common sense and common knowledge in our community. And I just found that fascinating that she did so much work, in order to support that non-common sense. So, it just fascinates me how much we put into supporting something that wouldnt support itself without all our buttress that we put up with our thought process.

JS: Yeah. I think thats great. I dont know that I have anything to add to that.

KH: Absolutely. I think one of our biggest stumbling blocks is this baseline legitimacy that we lend to the police, in spite of all that evidence, right? Like in Chicago, its not just activists who have documented the hell out of the fact that the Chicago Police are racist and sexually abusive, and that they murder and torture people. The United Nations has spoken to this. The Department of Justice has documented this thoroughly. And yet, people feel they have to lend them this baseline legitimacy when they show up and intercede in a situation.

Its been heartbreaking to watch that conversation around the case of MaKhia Bryant, because we have people watching this tape en masse, and critiquing this situation, the death of this child, as though what she was doing in those moments decided her fate. When in reality, a whole confluence of violent structural forces, all of them anti-Black, led to that cop gunning her down. And I hope thats something that people are willing to explore and think about in this moment. We dont have to assume the legitimacy of the police. We dont have to critique videos and narratives according to their prescribed set of policies that supposedly make it okay for them to hurt people. We can imagine how things should be, and build demands around that. We can ask what would have actually given someone a chance to survive and to thrive, and we can demand that. So, all of that said, in an immediate, strategic sense, what are you hoping people will do in the wake of this verdict? And do you have any asks for our listeners?

JS: You want to go first, D.A.?

DAB: I was going to ask you the same thing. I think immediately, like I said, Im right across the street from Daunte Wrights funeral as we speak. So, I cant help but just ask that the people not its okay to have the human sensibility of just breathing and exhaling, and I understand that because I did it myself once this verdict happened, but pretty soon after that, I was thinking about Daunte Wright, I was thinking about everyone who we need to just not allow for the system to just offer us this up as something that it is not. And we dont have to accept that. We know what we know, and we know that there is nothing that happened in this particular case, guilt or innocence, verdict or not, Derek Chauvin going to be punished off somewhere, that is going to change our material condition of living tomorrow with these police departments in our cities. We know that for a fact.

So, our next steps should be appropriate to that fact. Not appropriate, again, to the romanticism of, Wow, we have this conviction, now the world has changed. Now, we have a new path forward. Which a lot people are trying to sell that to you currently. They took that first opportunity to make sure you knew that were in a brave new world now, which is a lie. You know what I mean? We know that. Again, we know what we know, we know what is right in front of us. And we know the history. The conviction of Van Dyke for Laquan McDonalds murder, the next day in Chicago, everybody you could talk to, all the brothers on the South Side and the West Side and they would tell you, It was business as usual with the police.

And we know that, again, from our own experiences. So, I would say on the short term, the first step is to just make sure you are guarded and just aware against the forces, the rhetorical forces, that are going to come to tell you, Dont believe your lying eyes and your lying experience. Believe what were telling you that, this is a new day. Its not a new day. Were back to work on the next day. And there are some distinct things that are happening within our city that we know can really change the potential of how we are taking this step process and removing the Minneapolis Police Department from our midst. And one of them is, we have a charter, we have a constitution of our city that mandates that we have them amongst us. So, we know one of the first steps that we have to do in the short term is to change that constitution of our city, change that charter. And I know that thats something a lot of people are focused on and dedicated to because without that, obviously we cant shift certain structural things without that very start. Its like the key opening up the lock that allows us to open up the door.

JS: Yeah. I think thats right. Yeah, the immediate thing, I feel like, is to remember that this system isnt going to reform itself. Its not going to give us a new possibility. We have to create that together, ourselves. Yeah, and in Minneapolis, one of the next immediate steps is in November that ballot amendment to take MPD out of the charter. Hopefully get it before the voters and hopefully well have done enough work by then, that they understand why this is a good thing, and the kind of possibilities that it does open up. And even that, it doesnt necessarily do anything on its own. It takes away some barriers within it. It puts that possibility in our hands, again, as organizers, as people that care about what a just, safe city looks like, who are able to see that safety and policing are not the safe things. And then to figure out what that means.

KH: Well, this has been a great conversation and I want to thank you both, with my whole heart, for joining us today. And to really thank you for all that you do.

JS: Thank you for having us. I never miss an episode. So, its an honor to hear you.

DAB: Yes. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for everything you do. Im a big fan and supporter and Im so happy that were all out here together as fam, doing this work.

KH: Absolutely. I also want to thank our listeners for joining us today. And remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good and to remember that the good we do matters. Until next time, Ill see you in the streets.

Show Notes:

If you havent yet, we recommend you check out last weeks episode of Movement Memos, You Cannot Divorce Murder From Policing, a discussion with author Alex Vitale about the history and current state of policing in the U.S.

Further reading:

Minneapolis Activists Ask Local Leaders to Invest in Communities, Not Cops by Isabella Garcia

Minneapolis Defunds Its Police. Organizers Made It Happen. by Malaika Jabali

We Are Fighting for a World Where MaKhia Bryant Would Have Lived by Amna A. Akbar & Treva B. Lindsey

Uncaging Humanity: Rethinking Accountability in the Age of Abolition by Mariame Kaba, Josie Duffy Rice, and Reina Sultan

A World Where George Floyd And MaKhia Bryant Would Still Be Here Is A World Without Police by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie

Resources:

Critical Resistances Abolitionist Platform Toward Healthy Communities Now and Beyond COVID-19

#DefundPolice Toolkit: Concrete Steps Toward Divestment from Policing & Investment in Community Safety (toolkit)

Defund Police (This short explainer video collaboration from Project Nia and Blue Seat Studios.)

Police Abolition 101: Messages When Facing Doubts (zine)

One Million Experiments offers snapshots of community-based safety strategies that expand our ideas about what keeps us safe.

The Demand Is Still #DefundPolice (a toolkit)

Whats Next: Safer and More Justice Communities Without Policing (guide)

Originally posted here:

Police Convictions Are Not the Goal. Abolitionists Have Bigger Dreams. - Truthout

The family of George Floyd is celebrating after former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter in Floyd's death. "Today, we are able to breathe again," Floyd's brother Philonise said. (April 20) AP Domestic

The killing of George Floydshocked the nation last summer. On Tuesday, nearly one year later, a Hennepin County, Minnesota, jury moved the country once again:this time, with a guilty verdict in the trial of officer Derek Chauvin.

Cheers were heard outside the courtroom immediately after the reading of the verdict.Crowds in Minneapolischanted "All three counts!"

The former Minneapolis policeofficer was seen on video pinning Floyd to the ground with his knee for more than nine minutesas Floyd pleaded that he could not breathe.

The video of the arrest set off days of protests over the summer and served as aflashpoint for conversations about police brutality and racial injustice.

Chauvin faced three charges: second-degree murder,third-degree murder andsecond-degree manslaughter.After 14 days of testimony and more than 10 hours of deliberation, the jury found Chauvin guiltyon all three charges.

Local,state and federal officials are weighing in on the highly-anticipated verdict.

Live updates: Derek Chauvin jury reaches verdict in George Floyd's death

Here's what they are saying:

"The ruling in the Derek Chauvin trial is a clear step toward justice for the Floyd family and our entire country. However theres still much more work ahead to reform our criminal justice system.

"We need to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in order to prevent injustices and senseless loss of life in the future. Lets continue working together to enact change and honor the memory of all who have lost their lives to police brutality."

"I think this was a good day for Black America," Harrison told IndyStar. "I think certainly this doesnt solve all of our concerns and issues. But I think for the first time, you know, we had a case where we've really felt like there was justice done. And I think a lot of Black people, I've been hearing from members and people from the community, they feel a sense of relief andfeel the sense that there was justice this time done ...And hopefully this verdict will send a message to those officers across the country that they're going to be held to a higher standard, and they have to abide by the oath that they took to serve and protect all of the community and not just some."

"Our understanding of justice and abolition has been impacted heavily by the death of George Floyd, along with the deaths of Dreasjon Reed and McHale Rose. Today, the justice system attempted to acknowledge the fatally racist standards held by the police by convicting Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.

"As abolitionist, we understand that a conviction does not equate to justice or equity and that the conditions that created the environments for global uprisings to occur are present in our own communities: poverty, neglect by city leadership, and an overzealous police budget.

"Now is the time to commit to abolition fully and to defund the systems and entities that mass-produce these agents of white supremacy.

"We look forward to continuing the necessary work of political education and direct action so that our communities can thrive. We send our love and healing intentions to all families impacted by the state and the police. To freedom, and by any means."

Todays guilty verdict is one step in our journey to examine the role of the criminal justice system, particularly policing, in the treatment of Black Americans, said Mary Chandler, Board Chair of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee."Todays verdict represents accountability: for the Minneapolis community, for those who knew and loved Mr. Floyd and for our own ongoing commitment to listen, learn about the Black experience and promote change in the interest of a just future for our City."

We must have real conversations about policing and police reforms. But we must also move beyond conversations and get to action that creates meaningful change, saidTiffany Benjamin of the GIPC Executive Committee and Senior Director of Social Impact for Eli Lilly and Company. "By working together, we canand muststop this seemingly endless cycle that causes so much pain and lessens our communities, city and nation.

"For the past 11 months people of goodwill have prayed that George Floyds death would not be in vain and that justice would be done. Mr. Floyds family said they want peace and do not want to see any further violence. Racism is not a thing of the past and we all must continue to work and pray that the God-given dignity of all people, especially those in our country whose voices have not been heard adequately, will be respected. Let us never turn a blind eye to racism and let us pray that God will heal our broken world."

"Over the past year, Americans have stood and loudly stated that we will not simply bear witness to such grave injustices as those suffered by George Floyd and so many before him.

"While todays verdict can never right the wrongs committed against Mr. Floyd, today the world watched as we held power accountable. We must continue to be vocal and see to it that we fix a broken system that has divided us for too long."

People flooded George Floyd Square in Minneapolis minutes after former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in Floyd's death, which triggered worldwide protests last summer. (April 20) AP Domestic

"Indy Pride stands with our BIPOC community members today as the news of the Derek Chauvin trial breaks. We see you. We support you. We stand with you in our fight for justice and police accountability. We are relieved to see Derek Chauvin convicted of all charges and held accountable for his role in the death of George Floyd.

We reflect and remember George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and the lives lost at the hands of police brutality. We send love and light to our community members that are deeply affected by this, today and every day.

Let us celebrate this very small victory in the battle of inequality. This is the moment to make our voices louder and not let this moment halt the necessary continuing movement for police reform and equality."

"Each day, people across Indianapolis, across our state and across the country stood up to make their voice heard and to demand change. In this one instance, justice prevailed. But there remains significant work."

Thankfully, the jury reached the right decision and justice will be served," State Senator Melton's statement read in part."It is my hope now that a proper sentence is given that fits the crime committed and our entire country can use this case to transform the relationship and trust between people of color and the police.

"While the trial against Derek Chauvin was put on spotlight this month, it does not address or solve the ongoing injustices and problems too many Black men face on a daily occurrence across Indiana. Black men like myself in cities like Gary and Indianapolis are still to this day subjected to a culture where police misconduct against the Black community is never-ending and is on every screen and media space. We are simply unable to remove ourselves from a system that was never created to treat us fairly or justly. Police brutality against Black Hoosiers has always been prevalent in American culture, its just that the introduction of body cameras and smartphones finally exposed injustices in real time to millions across the country ...Systemic racism will only end in Indiana if leaders present a transparent process and solution to the public and lawmakers hold themselves to a higher standard that matches the values of our country, not the current political landscape. And lastly, I pray for the family of George Floyd and hope they received the closure they deserve.

"We remaincommitted to ending racism and promoting social justice. The events of last May prompted us to change the way we listen to communities who are marginalized and invest our resources to champion equality. We know making sustainable change is difficult, and we will continue to use the unifying power of basketball as a way to bring people together and work toward meaningful solutions."

"We hope this will be the beginning of the criminal justice reform that needs to take place both nationally and locally.

The great sacrifices and protests that were carried out demonstrate that the system needs significant change. It should not take numerous protests and other sacrifices to receive justice. We are grateful that the jurors had the courage to do the right thing.

This is bigger than politics. Racism is embedded in the fabric of our nation's foundation and is a blemish on our country's history. If we are to change course and make our world a better place, we must face this problem head-on and act now to enact positive change.

It is time to accept accountability and acknowledge the ramifications of slavery and racial injustice. We want Liberty and justice for all!

Though we cannot right all the wrongs of our country's history, we can make some intentional actions:

Dr. Martin Luther KingJr. said, No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. The words of Dr. King could never be truer. As a result, we see this victory as a step in the right direction and hopefully the beginning that leads to much needed change. These changes are not just for our generation, but for the generations that follow, for our sons and daughters and for their children."

"Addressing systemic racism is a journey, and it will take all of us coming together and doing the hard work to make the world a fairer and more just place. Lilly is committed to racial justice and will continue to push towards lasting change."

"We hope the outcome of the Derek Chauvin trial will begin to bring healing to our community and address the many factors that we know adversely affect families of color. While justice prevailed in this case, the racial trauma and repeated exposure to stories of violence and inequalities is still an on-going concern," HSE Schools said in a statement, in addition to district commitments and tips on how to talk about the verdict with your family.

"Thank you George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice. For being there to call out to your mom. How heartbreaking was that? Call out for your mom, 'I can't breathe.' But because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice," Pelosi said in a press conference.

Pelosi later tweeted: "George Floyd should be alive today. His familys calls for justice for his murder were heard around the world. He did not die in vain. We must make sure other families don't suffer the same racism, violence & pain, and we must enact the George Floyd #JusticeInPolicing Act."

Vice President Harris and President Biden and made joint remarks on the verdict Tuesday evening at the White House.

Today, we feel a sigh of relief," Harris said. "Still, it cannot take away the pain. A measure of justice isnt the same as equal justice. This verdict brings us a step closer. And the fact is, we still have work to do.

Harris also spoke about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which she introduced last year.

The President and I will continue to urge the Senate to pass this legislation, not as a panacea for every problem, but as a start. This work is long overdue. America has a long history of systemic racism We are all a part of George Floyd's legacy. And our job now is to honor it and to honor him.

After Chauvin's guilty verdict: A trial for policing, struggle for public trust begins anew

Biden spoke after Harris, calling the verdict "a step forward" but recognizing that "such a verdict is also much too rare for so many people."

"It was a murder in full light of day and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the stain on our nation's soul, the knee on the neck of justice for Black Americans ...this can be a giant step forward in the marchtoward justice in America," Biden said.

"No one should be above the law, and today's verdict sendsthat message. But it's not enough.We can't stop here. In order to deliver real change and reform,we can and we must do more to reduce the likelihood that tragedies like this will ever happen and occur again."

Contact IndyStar trending reporter Rashika Jaipuriar at rjaipuriar@gannett.com andfollow her on Twitter@rashikajpr.

Read or Share this story: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/indianapolis/2021/04/20/derek-chauvin-verdict-trial-update-george-floyd-reaction-in-indianapolis/7307902002/

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What Indianapolis leaders, organizations are saying about the Derek Chauvin verdict - IndyStar

The moment the guilty verdicts for Derek Chauvin were read, it felt like the Twin Cities collectively exhaled. The pain and trauma of police violence are palpable within Macalester and BIPOC communities in Minnesota, though Tuesday brought some bittersweet relief. If not justice, the Chauvin verdict at minimum brings accountability. But now what? Real justice will only be reached once we dismantle the racist system that looms over our communities.

Policing in the United States is fundamentally, irreparably broken. Rather than defenders of social safety, Minnesota law enforcement are acting as a tool for social control. Unfortunately for Governor Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey and other Minnesota officials, the recurring uprisings will not be squashed by kettling protesters, arresting college medics and posting National Guardsmen with rifles outside McDonalds. Only justice and progress will do that.

Abolition is a process a vision for a world with no need for cops. We must go beyond Democrats preferred reforms like body cameras and banning chokeholds, which are important but not proven to reduce police brutality. A popular proposal at the moment is reallocating police department funds to social services that prevent the conditions that lead to crime. The community organizing and mutual aid efforts surrounding the police killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center proves that these cities can be safe and intradependent, until the police provoke violence. That violence must be curbed, but a police free society will not happen overnight. This makes the steps we take to get there so crucial.

Here is my vision of what Minnesota cities can do starting today to transition away from traditional law enforcement and towards community-centered public safety:

To paraphrase the author Rosa Brooks, we ask cops to respond to every mishap in society. They are tasked to be social workers, surveillers, soldiers, medics and mediators. Most people could not manage a single one of these exhausting jobs. If you ask a random 25-year-old to do all of them in a 12 hour shift, they will fail. We should divest cops of many of these responsibilities and pass them to specialist civilians.

58% of killings by police in 2020 629 deaths were traffic stops, police responses to mental health crises or situations where the person was not reportedly threatening anyone with a gun. So first, armed police do not need to respond to traffic violations. Trigger-happy officers and a nauseating pattern of racial profiling have caused the traffic-stop deaths of Daunte Wright and Philando Castile here in Minnesota and 121 others across the nation in 2020. Minnesota should follow the lead of Berkeley, California, which created an agency of unarmed civil servants to conduct traffic enforcement. Second, in mental health and domestic crises, a social worker or mental-health professional should be present to handle situations without the instinct of escalation.

More generally, most police should not have guns. There should not be armed officers in public schools, public transportation, shelters and hospitals. Communities of color are often overpoliced for petty crime see the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner which does not make them safer. In response to disarming officers, many will ask, what about gun violence? Obviously, some special squads should still be armed. But its clear the status quo is not getting us anywhere. Cracking down on crime by beefing up cops has failed time and time again. Its a tough dilemma, but perhaps we should try taking guns off the streets and investing in opportunities for people instead of jail cells.

Believe it or not, Minneapolis has already taken baby steps towards a community-based public safety model. On the same day Macalester students were kettled in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis City Council passed a first-step ordinance to establish a division of traffic safety to remove cops from roadway enforcement. The 2021 city police budget also redirects 5% of its funds to alternative programs like a Mental Health Co-Responder Program and Community Group Outreach and Intervention. The city could go further to replace the majority of the police departments duties with these programs.

However, the city council failed to clear the most pressing hurdle towards reformation when it opted against approving a referendum to revise the city charter to remove the minimum licensed officer requirement. If approved, the referendum would have allowed the city to reallocate funds and personnel away from armed peace officers to more specialized duties. I believe a majority of Minneapolitans could get behind changes that reduce the presence of traditional cops in the neighborhood while maintaining or reducing crime rates.

From that point, the cities need the state legislature to take action. A DFL House and GOP Senate agreed on some common sense reforms like requiring an officer to intervene when another officer is using excessive force. However, they need to go further in removing protections for violent cops; Derek Chauvin is the first white cop in Minnesota history to be prosecuted for murder. This looks like disincentivizing violence by ending qualified immunity, amending use-of-force laws and removing bargaining power from police unions. Furthermore, the state can aid the transition to community-centered safety initiatives through funding and pilot programs.

Defunding and abolishing the police will meet fervent opposition and would require herculean efforts of community organizing, political persuasion, policy making and local cooperation. But it is worth it. We can design a system of public safety that relies on decentralized, disarmed, anti-racist public servants and community partnerships and we should do it now. Then, the work of transitioning away from policing altogether can begin.

(For an even more comprehensive vision of police abolition in Minneapolis, check out the MPD 150 report.)

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How Minneapolis Gets from Here to Abolition - Macalester College The Mac Weekly

The Restorative Justice Initiative at Penn State hosted political activist and scholar Angela Davis as the keynote speaker to kick off its Justice Education Week program. Davis is a civil rights advocate, author and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The event was moderated by Kathryn Belle, Efrain Marimon and Divine Lipscomb. The moderators guided Davis' talk by asking questions from the Zoom chat and previously submitted questions.

Davis discussed issues within the United States' prison institution regarding race, class, feminism and systemic oppression. She spoke about abolitionists in today's society and the effects from the Penn State community.

"Last summer, we witnessed millions and millions of people go out into the streets and speak out against police violence some calling for defunding the police," Davis said. "When we talk about abolition, we're not primarily referring to a negative process of elimination that needs to happen, but what is even more important is the productive side of abolition."

Davis raised questions about the prison industrial complex today and other alternatives to these institutions.

"How do we imagine a society that no longer needs to rely on these violent racist institutions? What do we need to change? Davis said.

Then, Belle asked Davis how the Restorative Justice Initiative can learn from the connection of her experiences of conferences, and scholarship with activism and prison abolition, and about the pitfalls of this in higher education.

Davis referenced the advocacy work she has been involved in since the 1960s and what she's learned.

"It occurs to me that it was a process understanding the interconnections and intersectionality of the issues," Davis said. "The ways in which the criminal legal system is linked to education starts in kindergarten to high school to the university."

Davis then spoke about her career path shes experienced backlash from her political views and her goals of prison abolition.

"I first came under attack at UCLA because of my political affiliation," Davis said. "I was fired from my first job at UCLA in the philosophy department because of my membership in the communist party."

Moreover, Davis connected the work Penn State's Restorative Justice Initiative is doing to work she has seen in the past.

"I know the Restorative Justice Initiative is emphasizing education and education within the prison systems," Davis said. "I think it's really important to remember what previously existed, and if one looks at the history of the prison system, one sees a pendulum swing that moves from before."

Members of the Penn State community were able to ask Davis questions. Residence hall coordinator Stephen Taylor, Penn State Law career services programmer Sharon Barney and student Damaris Fraser asked Davis questions personally.

According to Davis, educating children about the problems of racism and systemic oppression will lead to institutional changes.

Davis also spoke about the mental health support she received throughout her advocacy work because of the "collective action" from others in her organizations.

"If one has a collective awareness of the fact that there is work done not by just individuals, but also communities, then one doesn't think that the whole process will collapse," she said. "If I take off a little time to recover, I know that the work will continue, which is also a question of capitalism."

At the end of the event, Davis left the Penn State community with suggestions on what they can do to help, such as the conscious use of language and continuation of conversations.

"We have to engage in the kind of self reflexive consciousness that will allow us not only to participate in larger processes of change, but will allow us to change as well, our ways of being in the world to change."

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Activist, scholar Angela Davis discusses the U.S. prison system with Penn State's Restorative Justice Initiative - The Daily Collegian Online

NORTHAMPTON In traveling to Pulaski Park on Sunday, Ashwin Ravikumar, a volunteer with Northampton Abolition Now, said he noticed signs of new life, like cherry blossom trees.

But, the joy of spring was muted by the rage I feel, he told a crowd of about 100 people gathered in the downtown park on Sunday for the Spring into Abolition Festival. Ravikumar spoke about Daunte Wright, a Black man shot by the police at a traffic stop in Minnesota last week, and the killing of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old recently shot by the police, in Chicago a city I call home.

Ravikumar asked the crowd, Are the Northampton Police miraculously an exception to these patterns? The group shouted in return, no.

But, Ravikumar said, here in Northampton, we have a tremendous opportunity. He called on the city to create a new Department of Community Care that is independent from the Police Department.

That was the top recommendation from the citys Policing Review Commission report, released last month. The commission recommended that the city create the new department to respond to some 911 calls, like sending peer responders to mental health and substance use crises.

Around the park Sunday afternoon, organizations sat at tables with signs and flyers talking to people about their work. Groups included Northampton Abolition Now, the Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network, A Knee is Not Enough, Touch the Sky, and the Wildflower Alliance.

A growing number of cities across the United States are transforming their municipal budgets to reduce their reliance on police and move towards meeting the real needs of people in their communities, a statement from the groups organizing the event read.

In Northampton, Mayor David Narkewicz is slated to present his proposed budget in mid-May, one week before the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by police, the statement reads. We have a historic opportunity, right now, to win a concrete local victory in defense of Black Lives by divesting from policing and investing in a bold new vision of community safety in Northampton.

At the event, a number of activists from different organizations spoke. Aya Mares, a member of Decarcerate Western Massachusetts, read a poem written by Josh, who Mares said is incarcerated in the Hampden County Jail. Mares read Joshs writing about the difficulty of re-entering society after incarceration. Theres no such thing as rehabilitation here.

Before Javier Luengo-Garrido, a member of the citys Policing Review Commission, played the guitar and sang, he spoke to the crowd. The Department of Community Care must be accountable to those it serves and led by those it serves, he said. There is no other way.

Alternatives to the police, need to be peer-led, said Ya-Ping Douglass, a member of Northampton Abolition Now. She told the crowd about the groups demands, which include reallocating the more than $800,000 cut from the police department budget last year, creating a department of Community Care, and cutting the Police Fepartment budget by 50% and reallocating the funding.

Douglass encouraged people to contact the mayor and City Council, and said the group plans to do door-to-door canvassing soon.

Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.

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Groups host festival in support of divesting from police - GazetteNET

On Tuesday the state delivered what was intended to be a lullaby to soothe our collective outrage at the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin: whispers of guilty, guilty, guilty. Instead, within minutes, the nightmare of policing reared its ugly head as news broke that officers in Columbus, Ohio, responded to a call for help by pumping four bullets into the heart of a 16-year-old Black girl within ten seconds of arriving on the scene of a fight.

Notwithstanding the platitudes offered on cable news suggesting that we can all rest easy now that the verdict has put everything right in the world again, and the declarations of victory being made by everyone from pundits to players, Chauvins conviction of murder in the second degree represents neither justice nor change. It may offer a measure of solaceand we deeply hope George Floyds family and community can find some solacebut only in comparison to the alternative. No matter how much time Derek Chauvin is sentenced to, it wont bring George Floyd back to his loved ones or offer healing or repair. Nor will it bring any relief or respite to Black people terrorized on a daily basis by thousands of cops just like Derek Chauvin.

Not only has there not been justice, there hasnt been accountability. Chauvin hasnt taken any responsibility for his actions, and neither have the three cops who stood by as he murdered Mr. Floyd. Cops across the country are trumpeting the trial as a miscarriage of justice. Militarized police preparations for anticipated protests of the trials outcome frame communities as enemy combatants. And the passage of laws across the country criminalizing dissent and authorizing violence against protesters demonstrate the stark reality that the verdict wont do anything to protect Black communities facing brutal repression whenever we rise up in mourning and rage in the wake of each new police murder.

A single conviction of a single cop wont change the system that produced and enabled him; in fact, it will embolden it to continue business as usual under the pretext that it can deliver justice. For every rare criminal conviction of a killer cop, thousands more Black people will be murdered, maimed, raped, criminalized and dehumanized without consequence. Since 2005 there have been 140 police arrests on murder or manslaughter charges, while cops have killed over 1000 people a year on average since at least 2014.

In the six weeks since the Chauvin trial began, 64 people have been killed by police65, if we count MaKhia Bryant, shot as the verdict was handed down, and 68 if we count the three more people we know about who were shot the day after. Only 1.1% of police who kill people are criminally charged, and the number of prosecutions documented over a decade represents just over 1/10th of the number of people police kill in a year. Of these, only 44 cases yielded convictions, usually on lesser charges.

Each of these prosecutions consumed tremendous amounts of resources while leaving a murderous system intact. Not one of them stopped the next killing. Yet each is offered up as an illusion that the system will somehow hold itself accountable. The state will gladly sacrifice a few officers in unique and spectacular cases to preserve the status quo while enabling policymakers to peddle the idea that justice has been done.

Policymakers are already making it clear that they no longer feel pressure to continue with the political theater of passing legislation that would have done nothing to prevent Mr. Floyds deathand would pour $750 million more dollars into departments like the one that employed Chauvin to investigate police killings after the fact. They will use Chauvins conviction to argue that the system is working just as it should, and to stifle any efforts at substantive systemic change. In other words, George Floyds murder is being used to recuperate the institution that killed him in the midst of one of the greatest crises of legitimacy it has faced.

The state will gladly sacrifice a few officers in unique and spectacular cases to preserve the status quo while enabling policymakers to peddle the idea that justice has been done.

The futility of prosecutions in preventing the next police killing was proven by the actions of a Columbus, Ohio, officer who gunned a Black girl down in the street in front of her home as the verdict in the Chauvin case was read, and of the officers who then proceeded to yell Blue Lives Matter at a grieving crowd of Black people who had witnessed her murder while wearing face masks with the pro-police slogan emblazoned on them.

But MaKhia Bryant is much more than a well-timed rhetorical point in a debate about reimagining policing vs. abolishing the violent institution altogether. She matters not because the timing of her killing allows for a neat juxtaposition, but because her life does.

MaKhia was a beloved Black girl who would still be here if we didnt perseverate on the myth that cops and policing keep us safe. If we focused on how Black girls are perceived and policed from the youngest age in every institution. If we understood that for Black women, girls, trans and gender-nonconforming people, a call for help can be and is all too often fatal. If we understood the violence Black girls routinely experience in the foster system as part of the violence we are fighting to end. If we understood that our failure to protect Black girls, women and trans people from violence and provide for a world where they have everything they need to be safe often leaves them with no choice but to defend themselves and then be criminalized, punished, or worse yet, killed as a result.

As members of the In Our Names Network gathered on Tuesday night to hold space together and learn more about how we could support MaKhias family and organizers on the ground in Columbus, we worried that the tragedy of MaKhias killing would be sacrificed to the imperative of the recuperation narrative, to preserve the dream that justice was and can be done for a Black man killed by police.

George Floyds murder is being used to recuperate the institution that killed him in the midst of one of the greatest crises of legitimacy it has faced.

We braced ourselves for the inevitable demonization, victim-blaming and adultification of a Black girl, and the predictable distinctions drawn between armed and unarmed victims of police violence. We anticipated the focus on what she was doing instead of questioning why killing her, as opposed to employing a multitude of other options, including de-escalation, is being normalized as a rational response under circumstances. We watched as her family fought to have the world see MaKhia as worthy of life, and as people circulated videos of a beautiful sweet Black girl doing her hair in an effort to counter criminalizing and dehumanizing projections. We know that there will be no conviction or accountability for the officer involved, and that non exceptional killings like this will continue to be routinely justified in contrast to rare prosecutions of police. Her experience illuminates the full picture of policing, in which the Chauvin prosecution is the exception, not the rule.

As the state continues to sing the lullaby that justice was served in the Chauvin case and we can make the system work for us, we cannot be seduced by siren songs of faux accountability and prison sentences. More and more people are becoming uneasy and disquieted by the lullaby, rather than being induced to slumber. We all need to keep our eyes wide open to see the work ahead.

The demand is still to defund and abolish policing. We cannot let policymakers claim this conviction as a justification to continue to pour money into policing and punishmentincluding through more investigations, consent decrees, commissionsand oversightwhile our communities continue to be defunded and denied the resources we need to survive, the majority of survivors of violence continue to be left behind by law-enforcement-based approaches, and our loved ones continue to be criminalized and killed. We cannot afford to double down on the notion that if we just pour more faith and funds into the system including money intended for pandemic recovery the nightmare will dissipate.

We watched as her family fought to have the world see MaKhia as worthy of life, and as people circulated videos of a beautiful sweet Black girl doing her hair in an effort to counter criminalizing and dehumanizing projections.

We cant sleep in a world where a man is murdered over a $20 bill and then blamed for his own death, where a woman is killed in a police home invasion, where a teens call for help can be fatal, where children are killed before, during, and after a trial intended to burnish the reputation of the institution that killed them. The whole damn system is in fact guilty as hell. Its time to build a world where they would all still be here to dream their own futures. A world where there is more safety, more resources, and infinitely more options to address conflict, harm and need. A world without police.

Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie are co-founders ofInterrupting Criminalization, and co-authors ofNo More Police: A Case for Abolition(forthcoming from New Press in 2022). Kaba is the author of the New York Times best-sellerWe Do This Til We Free Us, founder ofProject Nia, and co-founder ofSurvived and Punished. Ritchie is the author ofInvisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, co-author ofSay Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, and co-founder of theIn Our Names Network.

SEE ALSO:

There Is No Country For Black Girls Like MaKhia Bryant

We Must Reimagine Public SafetyAnything Less Fails Our Communities

More here:

A World Where George Floyd And MaKhia Bryant Would Still Be Here Is A World Without Police - NewsOne

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. Im Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzlez.

As weve reported, a jury in Minneapolis has convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin on three counts of murdering George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds last May. Hes the first white police officer in Minnesota to ever be convicted of killing a Black person. The jury reached its decision after 10 hours of deliberation. Judge Peter Cahill revoked Chauvins bail and will sentence him in two months. He faces up to 40 years in prison for the most serious charge, second-degree murder.

For more, we go to Minneapolis, where we speak with Kandace Montgomery, co-executive director of Black Visions Collective, a Black-led, queer- and trans-centering community organization based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul thats part of the movement calling to defund the police.

Kandace, welcome to Democracy Now! First, your reaction to the verdict?

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, my reaction, like many, was an exhale for our community. Many of us have been holding our breath in anticipation for this verdict. And though I dont think that justice can ever be served when weve lost a life in this type of situation, I do think its important to be able to honor that exhale of a breath and honor the peace that Im sure George Floyds family and friends are now able to experience and feel. And so, for that, for them, I, you know, am, of course, very happy.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Kandace, Im wondering your reaction to the statements of Attorney General Keith Ellison. He gave a very lengthy statement after the verdict, going into basically the history of abuse of African Americans by law enforcement. Your reaction to that and to his role in all of this?

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: Yeah, you know, I think its really critical that we are lifting up this history and that Attorney General Keith Ellison is also doing so. And his work to really push for justice in this moment has been important in many ways.

At the same time, you know, Attorney General Keith Ellison also has been part of the militarized occupation that is currently happening in Minneapolis and across Minnesota in response in preparation for this verdict, as well as response to the murder of Daunte Wright. And so, you know, my offering back to the attorney general is to really look at the ways that we are able to not just reckon with the history that we have to deal with, but also look at how we are perpetuating that history in these moments, specifically by limiting the rights of Black and Brown protesters right here in his state for peacefully protesting against, once again, another police murder.

JUAN GONZLEZ: And in terms of the sentencing for Chauvin, will be in about in approximately eight weeks, your sense of what would be a just sentence for him in this situation?

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: I dont necessarily think that I have an assessment of what would feel as a just sentence in this moment. As an abolitionist and as someone who really thinks that justice is tied up much beyond someone being imprisoned, I think its important to really think about justice, going forward, actually looks like defunding and abolishing police. It actually looks like ending militarized occupation in cities that are responding to police murders and the like, and truly uprooting the hideous roots of this institution of policing in this system that continues to kill Black people. At the same time that we were, you know, exhaling or collectively celebrating the verdict of George Floyds murder, we also witnessed another murder of a Black teenager, MaKhia Bryant, almost at the exact same time. And so, really, as folks are looking forward to the sentencing, I really want to encourage people to think about justice as much more long-term and that we set our bar a lot higher when it comes to calling for justice than an adequate sentencing or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Last year, Kandace, in the days after the protests erupted over Derek Chauvins murder of George Floyd, the majority of the Minneapolis City Council made a pledge to dismantle the police. This is Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender.

LISA BENDER: Our commitment is to end our citys toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department, to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.

AMY GOODMAN: Around the same time last year after George Floyds murder, organizers with your group, Black Visions Collective, and others convinced Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to step outside his home to speak with them. In this clip, we hear you, Kandace, questioning the mayor.

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: Will you defund the Minneapolis Police Department?

MAYOR JACOB FREY: I do not support the full abolition of the police department.

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: All right, fine! Youre wasting our time! Get the [bleep] out of here! Get the [bleep] out!

PROTESTERS: Go home, Jacob! Go home! Go home, Jacob! Go home! Go home, Jacob! Go home!

AMY GOODMAN: So, thats Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey telling you, Kandace Montgomery, I cannot support the full abolition of the police. Now, that was last June. I want to ask you two things. First of all, the importance of the activists? Its something that the Floyd family repeated over and over last night in thanking activists. The only reason the first African American elected to statewide office in Minnesota, Keith Ellison, was in charge of this prosecution is because it was taken out of the hands of Hennepin County by the governor as a result of the massive protests. And then, I want to ask about the protests very much centering around this whole push for defunding the police in Minneapolis, including the City Councils vote, what, in December to cut $8 million from the $170 million police budget and divert the funds to mental health and violence prevention. Lay out for us what you have proposed and what you feel has been accomplished and what you think needs to be accomplished.

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: Yeah. So, for the several last years, even before 2020, Black Visions and our partner, Reclaim the Block, and other community organizations have been calling for the divestment from policing and, in particular, the investment in our communities investment as in investment in real safety, the things that actually create the conditions for safe and healthy and vibrant communities, like housing, like healthcare, like quality access to jobs, like water that you can drink, things like that, instead of pouring and wasting millions of dollars on policing, that we know, ultimately, have, one, never been designed to protect and serve low-income people, people of color ever in fact, were intentionally created to oppress and keep us in our current conditions. That has really been our call since 2018.

And so, in 2020, it was really an important and immediate call to action to defund the police after the murder of George Floyd, because, for me and many of my comrades, that is what justice actually looks like, is ending this and making sure that there is never another George Floyd or a Daunte Wright or a Dolal Idd or a MaKhia Bryant or a Breonna Taylor ever again. That has really been the work that weve been doing.

And we have been working with the City Council to push forward that demand. Right now what that looks like here in Minneapolis is calling for the development of a Department of Public Safety and a charter change in our city that will eliminate the requirement for the current shape of our police department, the amount of officers, and really the amount of money that we waste every year here in Minneapolis on policing, and allow us to move those resources and create the infrastructure at a citywide level for real investment in safety alternatives that do not rely on the police solely, and a public health approach to how we think about safety here in Minneapolis that truly centers care for all of our people. And the City Council, along with community organizers, have been working on this initiative this year and are excited to bring it to voters in November, this proposed charter change.

What Ill say about our mayor, Jacob Frey, is that what weve seen since last summer and to this point is that he is completely inadequate to fulfill the responsibilities of his executive role, to be clear about the types of decisions that he does or does not have power around, to actually fulfill the promises that he ran on when he was being elected, and has continuously tried to pit Black communities against each other in order to preserve his political standing and actually not move forward on investments in community safety like his constituents have been calling for. So I think its important for people to understand the ways that our mayor has really blocked and gotten in the way of justice.

You know, I want to shout out the George Floyd Square organizers, who for almost an entire year have been out there every single day, out there between 8 a.m. 'til late into the evening, protesting and holding down truly sacred space that is providing mutual aid and care to community members, that is curating the art of this movement, so that people can memorialize and remember this moment, and is not letting the city back down from its promises. That has been so crucial, as well as the organizing led by young people during the uprising last summer that truly lit the fire under the conversation here in Minneapolis, but across the country and across the globe, and put pressure in all of the right places that were needed. And then, of course, our demands, alongside others, to not just call for Black lives mattering, but for to call for a clear demand to change this system by defunding the police, as we move towards abolition of the police ultimately, over the years to come, and invest in a new model, a new future, a new vision, for how we do safety. So, that's really the moment here. And I really appreciate you lifting up the importance of activism, and not just activism, but intentional organizing, that folks have put into, intentional strategy that community members have been building for decades to get us to this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And this just incredible moment of the bystanders, the passersby, who simply cared, didnt know each other, including, at the time, the 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, who was the one who took that video. And I want to just end this conversation with a reminder of what actually came out from the police department versus what Darnella did.

Shortly after Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, the Minneapolis Police Department issued a press release describing what had happened. The release was titled Man Dies [After] Medical Incident During Police Interaction. The statement said, in part, quote, Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.

It was only that video, and then, of course, the eyewitness testimony of passersby who didnt know George Floyd, but who were deeply concerned about watching a slow-motion murder, that showed the lie of this press release. Your final comment, Kandace?

KANDACE MONTGOMERY: Yes, eternally grateful for Darnella and her bravery in being willing to not only witness this murder but report it, so that the family and others could pursue justice for George Floyd. And again, the police department will continue to show its true colors and what its actually rooted in, which is making up lies and committing crimes against humanity for the sake of maintaining its institutional power. So, I think that that is important.

And it should not be lost on people that here in Minnesota right now we are experiencing extreme response and militarized occupation of National Guard and millions of dollars being poured into policing, risking these same conditions. And so, you know, I think that its important that we witness this, that we document these things, that we share these things, and that we continue to protest, we continue to get out in the streets, because we know that the police will lie on our name any day without hesitating, and that only we are the ones who are able to keep us safe. And Darnella reminded us of that.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, Darnella was with her 9-year-old cousin, who was wearing a T-shirt that said Love. Kandace Montgomery, co-executive director of Black Visions Collective, a Black-led, queer- and trans-centering community organization based in the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

Next up, we go to Harvard professor Khalil Gibran, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Stay with us.

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Black Visions Collective: We Need to Abolish the Police & End Militarized Occupations of Our Cities - Democracy Now!

All of New Zealand's 20 district health boards will be replaced by one, single national health body responsible for the running of all hospitals, the Government has revealed.

Wellington DHBs have reacted to the news of the biggest health system shake-up in a generation, which will see their structure changed significantly from July next year.

New Zealand's 20 district health boards (DHBs) will be replaced by one national body, Health New Zealand, alongside a Mori health authority.

Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast DHBs issued a joint statement through board chair David Smol shortly after the announcement on Wednesday.

"Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast DHBs will work closely with the Government on the implementation of these changes and will continue to work collaboratively as we transition towards the new structure and system," he said.

"In the meantime, we remain focused on providing excellent levels of healthcare and support for the people in our region people, place, and partnership remain at the heart of what we do.

"We remain committed to intensifying support and improving equitable health outcomes for Mori, Pacific people and those living with disability, mental illness and addiction."

Wairarapa DHB Chief Executive Dale Oliff said their "absolute priority" was the health of their community as they transitioned to a new structure.

"We will ensure continuity of care and service and we will support our highly valued staff and healthcare partners, and our community, as we work towards a stronger health and disability system," he said.

"It will take time to transition towards the new structure and, in the meantime, our commitment to improved services and equitable outcomes of care for our Wairarapa population is central to all that we do."

The major changes were announced by Health Minister Andrew Little on Wednesday morning, following on from recommendations made by the Heather Simpson Health and Disability Systems Review last year.

20 Apr, 2021 08:26 PMQuick Read

20 Apr, 2021 06:00 AMQuick Read

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The changes also included that the Ministry of Health become an advisory and policy agency only, with a new Public Health agency created within the ministry.

Today's announcement goes further than the recommendations made in last year's Simpson report, which only advised the number of DHBs be halved from 20 down to eight or 10.

Porirua GP Dr Bryan Betty, who is also the head of the Royal New Zealand College of GPs, said the scrapping of the DHB system was "totally unexpected".

"It's very, very significant what's been announced, particularly the abolition of DHBs across New Zealand."

He hoped the move would address the existing inequities in the DHB-based system.

"We know over time the system has become inequitable in the way it operates, it depends on where you live which gives access to health care.

"So if this reform changes that and makes the delivery of health care more equitable across New Zealand, then it's certainly the right thing to do."

He said the changes also needed to address generations of inequitable health outcomes for Mori.

"New Zealand has to do something about the appalling statistics we have in this country, and if this delivers on the ability to rectify these statistics, that is the right thing to do."

Manpower within the primary sector and access to secondary and hospital care were also areas of concern.

"We know we have issues with manpower, general practitioners have a workplace crisis at this point. We know there are difficulties in the system in terms of accessing secondary care, the way community care operates with hospitals.

"All those problems need to be fixed going forward so people can get fair equitable access to healthcare in the community and through the hospital system."

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Wellington health bosses react to overhaul that will see DHBs abolished - New Zealand Herald

Authors Note: We wrote this piece before the Chauvin trial verdict was announced, but we wanted to emphasize: what happened Tuesday was not, in any sense of the term, justice. The system cannot and will not indict itself, and anti-Black violence is inherent to its design. What it will do in exceptionally rare circumstances is sacrifice one bad apple in order to maintain the legitimacy of the rotten and corrupt tree that is policing. As the verdict was literally being delivered, police murdered MaKhia Bryant a 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio after she called them for help. Police cannot and will not keep us safe; we need abolition now.

This extends to Stanford University. On Tuesday, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne told the Black community that their voices matter. We recall demands from Black student organizations as recently as last year to dismiss, disarm and divert funding from the Stanford University Department of Public Safety. Stanford has ignored this and done the literal opposite, through its new $34 million Public Safety building, continued hiring of deputy sheriffs, ongoing talks to renegotiate the Deputy Sheriffs Association labor agreement and more. MTLs words are hollow, and nothing short of the complete dismantling of SUDPS will be enough.

Across the country, labor unions face political barriers, corporate opposition, and downright abuse when organizing and advocating for workers rights. But theres one exception: police unions. Police unions secure their power through union contracts that absolve officers of all accountability. Stanford Universitys contract with the Stanford Deputy Sheriffs Association (SDSA), which represents officers who work for the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS), is no different. By protecting officers with impunity, the contract directly endangers all other workers at Stanford. It is set to be renewed for a five-year period this year, with a May 2 deadline to modify or terminate it.

Abolish Stanford demands an immediate halt to contract negotiations, a start to meaningful engagement with community demands and termination of the contract. We encourage Stanford community members to take action and call on the University to terminate the contract before May 2. Call and email contract negotiators and University administration with your thoughts on the SDSA contract, and join the larger fight for abolition by taking part in Cops Off Campuss Day of Refusal on May 3.

Heres why this is so important.

Problems with police unions and the SDSA contract

Police unions often called associations, orders or lodges enjoy a place of privilege with local and state governments to such an extent that their rights have been carved out for protection when the right to organize and bargain collectively is under attack. Police union contracts grant unusual protections that go well beyond the scope of collective bargaining in any other sector.

According to multiple analyses, police contracts frequently erase misconduct from officers records, give officers unfair access to information before interrogations and disqualify complaints if investigations take longer than a set period of time, usually 180 days or fewer. Equally alarming is what these contracts often fail to include: processes for civilian oversight and set procedures in cases where deadly force is used, to name a few. Whereas unions in other industries fight for fair wages, benefits, safe working conditions and recourse for harassment and discrimination, police unions secure protections against misconduct investigations and public oversight, allowing them to act with impunity.

The SDSA contract is like many police contracts around the country: It ensures police are exempt from scrutiny and consequences, while funding an apparatus that leaves civilians terrorized and brutalized in the name of public safety. Officers receive paid leave during disciplinary investigations (sections 9.5 and 9.7B) and can seek outside arbitrators to reverse disciplinary or termination decisions (12.1C). Investigations into misconduct are curtailed in multiple ways: Advance warning is given for locker searches (21.3), officers must be informed ahead of time of the topics to be covered in an interrogation (9.7A) and investigation timelines are determined by the officer being investigated and the SDSA (9.7B). Misconduct records, including arrests, are expunged after three years (9.3C and D), a mechanism that is common in police union contracts and notably kept the man who murdered George Floyd on the force in Minneapolis despite repeated incidents of misconduct and violence. At Stanford, this mechanism allowed Captain Sgt. Chris Cohendet to stay at SUDPS after being arrested for a DUI in 2010.

However, the SDSA contract goes further. Stanford cannot discipline or terminate SUDPS deputies without approval from SUDPS (sections 9.1, 9.6, and 9.8). These clauses reinforce the strange agreement governing policing at Stanford: Police are deputized by elected officials, paid by a private entity, but responsible to themselves. This type of public-private policing was unheard of in California until Stanford invented it to target and eliminate growing campus protests around racial justice and against the Vietnam War.

Police associations and the labor movement

Police associations are a cruel irony to the labor movement. Police are routinely deployed against union organizers and strikes, despite their own unions benefiting from the labor rights secured by those they brutalize. In an interview on the contradictory role of cops in the labor movement, union organizer Halimat Alawode describes the membership of police union locals in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO): When we were fighting for collective bargaining for ourselves, [police] were clubbing us. And now theyve given themselves the ability to club us with impunity, using the same collective bargaining tools.

Throughout history, police have beaten and murdered workers in struggles remembered by appropriately somber names like Bloody Thursday, when plainclothes officers fired into a crowd of picketers in San Francisco and killed two in 1934; the Memorial Day Massacre, when the Chicago Police Department murdered ten striking steel workers in 1937 and the Battle of Blair Mountain, one hundred years ago this summer, when nearly 100 striking coal miners were murdered by law enforcement in West Virginia. Unfortunately, police violence against organized labor is not a thing of the past Memphis police were recently caught surveilling a union organizers home. Last summer, when Black working class people led the largest protest in the countrys history, police responded with tear gas, tanks and bullets rubber and lead.

Labor organizers know that this contradiction between workers rights and police union interests cannot be sustained. Movements are building within many international unions, including Drop the Cops at Service Employees International Union, Cop-free AFSCME at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as No Cop Union at the AFL-CIO, to push police association affiliates out of unions. There is no place for cops in the labor movement, or in our workplace.

SUDPS poses a threat to other Stanford workers

Cops on Stanfords campus directly harm workers. Graduate student workers who live on campus have been threatened with eviction by cops ostensibly enforcing COVID-19 mandates. In an open meeting with the Community Board on Public Safety, a participant shared a story of a graduate student worker who commutes to campus: They drove to each parking lot near the COVID-19 testing center to find officers patrolling and issuing tickets in all of them, and thus were forced to choose between compliance with the mandatory testing program and a ticket costing over $40. Noncompliance endangers a graduate workers job, while a ticket costs them at least an hour ofwages(and realistically far more, given the realities of graduate-student work), lost wages that go directly back to their employer, Stanford.

Many graduate workers who work late hours on campus, especially Black workers, have been followed by officers, and officers routinely demand that Black workers, including faculty, prove they work at Stanford. The presence of police on campus constitutes an unsafe and hostile work environment.

The SDSA contract severely limits the Universitys ability to investigate, discipline or fire officers in the case of misconduct. In the terms of the contract, deputies under investigation for misconduct retain their job and receive pay continuance throughout the (highly curtailed) investigation. Workers at Stanford bear the consequences of this contract every day when they are surveilled, harassed and threatened by police. It is ludicrous to call the police at Stanford a department of public safety because they are not accountable to the public, and they do not keep us safe.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the racist institution of policing, the University responded to student protests by delaying long term negotiations on the police union contract and instead renewing it for one year (the city of San Jose did the same). This mere delay did nothing to make Stanford a safe place to work and live all of the above stories from graduate student workers occurred since the contract was renewed in July. The demands of Black students at Stanford are still unmet. Stanfords response namely its Community Board on Public Safety, which is charged with fostering trust [and] relationships with SUDPS was designed to re-legitimize SUDPS, not fundamentally change it. We demand that the SDSA contract be terminated.

Action against the SDSA contract

The Cops off Campus Coalitions May 3 Day of Refusal is a chance to exercise power where it truly lies: with the people. By withdrawing our labor as students and workers, we re-center the conversation around abolition, rather than reformist reforms. We remind people that policing is racist to its core and serves to protect private property and the interests of the ruling class. And we re-emphasize the importance of abolition not further policing as the only way to keep our community safe.

We strongly encourage Stanford community members to take action and tell Stanford to terminate the contract before May 2. Protest the presence of cops on campus by refusing to provide labor to the University on May 3 as part of the national Cops Off Campuss Day of Refusal.

Abolish Stanford

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Op-Ed | Tell Stanford: End the collective bargaining agreement with the Deputy Sheriffs' Association - The Stanford Daily

Certain circles maintain that in Punjab the law allows labourers, especially those working at brick kilns, to obtain up to Rs50,000 from the owners in loans, even though the Supreme Court has prohibited this practice. It emerged during the hearing of a case, at the Islamabad High Court, relating to the abolition of bonded labour at brick kilns in the province.

When the counsel for brick kiln proprietors mentioned the legal cover given to the practice, the chief justice expressed astonishment at the existence of any such law as it violates the orders of the Supreme Court.

The IHC ordered the Islamabad administration to end the abominable practice without any further delay, as it works as a debt trap for poor labourers; seldom are they able to pay off the loaned amount.

As a result, not only these unlettered and poor workers but their families become bonded labourers, and they have to work without wages for years.

Brick kiln owners claim that they do a service by extending loans to labourers in times of need, saying if they stopped helping workers, there would be no incentives for labourers to work at their establishments. This argument is fallacious as is evident from the fact that bonded labourers live a miserable life.

The government set up a commission in February to examine the issue and recommend ways and means for the emancipation of bonded labour. The commission in its exhaustive report has rightly described bonded labour as a form of slavery. There are many laws in Pakistan to tackle the issue of bonded labour. Besides, the country signed the relevant ILO conventions way back in the 1960s. Unfortunately, these laws are rarely implemented.

Education can significantly contribute to the elimination of bonded labour. The present instance shows how the orders of even the highest court of the land are ignored. This is happening even though the PM has regularly been stressing the importance of the rule of law.

See the article here:

Bonded labour - The Express Tribune