Tag Archives | Defund the Police

The gains and setbacks in the movement for Black lives prove how racism is woven deeply into the fabric of capitalism and US society.

2021 as the city, and nation, begin to climb out of a pandemic that saw mass economic and social fallout—to say nothing of the lives lost. A historic, once-in-a-lifetime worldwide event destabilized the lives of countless people, and also led to an undeniable rise in shootings and homicide across the country.

“Defunding” the police has often turned out to be an accounting trick, but community control of police – a righteous demand – must also ensure that all government functions address human needs. One year ago, thousands of people engaged in protest in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer. A persistent protest […]

The 2020 uprisings articulated transformative visions of a world without anti-Black violence, a world without hyper-funded police forces and thus a world with deep community safety and care.

The excessive use of force and killings of unarmed Black Americans by police has fueled a popular movement for slashing police budgets, reimagining policing, and directing freed funds to community-based programs that provide medical and mental health care, housing, and employment support to those in need. This is a long overdue development.

The Black movement will be asphyxiated by the ubiquitous fingers of the Democratic Party if it does not build independent nexuses of people’s power.

Cutting police budgets without establishing public control over their behavior doesn’t solve the problem, and invites politicians to shuffle budget numbers around like a three-card monte swindle.

Community control of the police means empowering the people to shape and oversee the mechanisms of their own security and end forever the armed occupation of our communities by hostile forces.

Companies that say they stand with protesters have been funding police foundations for years.

Is abolishing the same as defunding? Does either one mean the police have been defeated? What does it mean when liberals start saying abolishing the police isn’t all that scary? A socialist take on an exciting set of slogans.

America’s power brokers are hoping murals, kente cloth, and a series of half-baked legislative reforms will appease activists into giving up the fight for real change.

Abolition of the police begins with community control, in which community representatives not only hire, fire and oversee the cops, but decide the nature of the policing that is necessary and acceptable.

The U.S. military’s budget, like so many police department budgets, is bloated, and diverts our tax dollars into forces of domination and violence. Now is the time to question our spending priorities at the local and federal level.

Between 1963 and 1972, there were more than 750 Black-led urban revolts in the United States in 525 cities. How did sociologists react?