After
a two-day conference attended by 850 people from 28 states and numerous
anti-racist and other progressve organizations, activists voted on November 24
to reconstitute the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
police violence and racism have been festering for years as the 2014 conference
described below articulated.
*********************
Sunday, May 18, 2014
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.”
