Harry Targ
Stop
Police Crimes!
End
Mass Incarceration!
Free
All Political Prisoners!
(Rally with Angela Davis, Trinity United Church of
Christ, part of the National Forum on Police Crimes, Chicago, Illinois, May 17,
2014).
It was inspiring and informative attending the rally
with Angela Davis and the celebration of the lifelong political work of
Charlene Mitchell, the founder of the National Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression (NAARPR). The rally and award ceremony honoring Davis and
Mitchell capped a two-day National Forum on Police Crimes at the University of
Chicago.
The National Forum held workshops highlighting
police crimes against undocumented and other immigrant workers, the labor
movement and all workers, the LGBTQ community, women, peace and solidarity activists,
and people of color.
Central themes reflected in the workshops and the
rally included the current condition of police misconduct in the United States,
an analysis of the fundamental role of the police and incarceration in the
United States, the interconnectedness of forms of repression and the struggles
against them, and the twin roles of repression and ideology as the glues
holding together a global political economy in crisis. Lastly, the celebration
of the 41 years of the NAARPR illustrated the possibilities of struggle and
victory.
The call for the National Forum highlighted the
contemporary crises of civil rights and civil liberties including:
-a “national epidemic” of police and vigilante
killings of young African American men, such as Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant;
-the mass incarceration of people of color such
that, as Michelle Alexander has reported,
more African Americans are in jail or under the supervision of the
criminal justice system today than were in slavery in 1850;
-the targeting and deportation of millions of immigrants;
-the institutionalization of laws increasing
surveillance;
-the passage of so-called Stand Your Ground laws,
justifying gun violence against people perceived as a threat;
-and the continued persecution of political prisoners from the recently convicted
Occupy Movement activist Cecily McMillan, to the thirty-year listing of exiled
Assata Shakur, living in Cuba, as one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists,
despite the fact that her original
conviction for murder was based
on faulty evidence.
Several speakers during the rally made it clear that
the primary purpose police forces play in the United States is to protect the
stability of the existing economic and political system. In short, the police
in virtually every community serve the interests of what Occupiers call the one
percent in opposition to the 99 percent.
While laws and police often come to the aid of
aggrieved members of communities, their primary function is to protect the
unequal distribution of wealth and income and political power. The physical
presence of police, with larger numbers in poor and Black and Brown communities
than others, constitutes a threat to the physical survival of people,
particularly young men. For most people in poor communities of color, the
police represent an occupying power.
Police repression in the United States is embedded
in the history of slavery, institutionalized racism, the legitimized use of
violence, and the interconnectedness of violence against African-Americans,
Latinos, women, gays, transgender people, and workers. Further, police
repression on a global basis serves to impose policies in keeping with
neoliberal globalization; including the privatization of public institutions,
cutting back on social safety nets, opposing demands by low-wage workers for
economic justice, and extracting larger shares of the value of the labor of
workers. Since the embrace of neoliberal policies virtually everywhere in the
world, economic inequality has grown dramatically. With growing protest
activities, police and military repression has increased as well.
Speakers suggested that the criminal justice
system--the police, prisons, and laws restricting political participation—is a
form of direct violence; that is seeking to create pliant behavior by force or
the threat of force. Further, the criminal justice system is an instrumentality
of structural violence; protecting the various forms of exploitation and
oppression embedded in the society at large.
In addition it is replicated in the broader culture.
Mass media romanticize police behavior, courts of law, even vigilante forms of
violence. Police programs, the portrait of scientists engaged in uncovering
crimes, and even police comedies pitting bungling but wise police investigators
against incorrigible criminals give credence to the necessity of police,
prisons, oppressive laws, and the need for order. Consumers of pop culture are
rewarded for their willing acceptance of the systems of control as they exist
for an hour or two of entertainment. Besides, most people think, what are the
alternatives to armed police, laws, prisons, and the right-to-bear arms?
The National Alliance Against Racist and Political
Repression successfully struggled to free Angela Davis and many others falsely
incarcerated and inspired mobilizations of activists everywhere to protest
police violence, prisons, the death penalty, and Stand Your Ground laws. The
Alliance in Chicago continues the struggle and has demanded civilian control of
the police.
Angela Davis posed the vision of an unarmed police
force administered by the community and the elimination of prisons entirely.
While these proposals cannot be achieved in the short run, she and the Alliance
believe as the World Social Forum suggests, “Another World is Possible.” To
make these visions reality they say, “a multi-racial, multi-national and
multi-cultural broad-based movement” is needed to create “united democratic
action.”
