While it might be fair to say that the police enjoy support among the majority of the white population, the police enjoy no such support among the majority of Black people, who endure more frequent and harsher interactions with cops than whites.
To be sure, white support for the police decreases proportionately with income. That is to say, poorer whites tend to support the police less because the police interact with them differently than with their wealthier white counterparts. By the same token, support for the police among Blacks tends to increase proportionately with increases in income, wealth and other privileges. Overall and within each economic stratum, however, white support for police is higher than Black support.
Similarly, largely as a consequence of physical or sexual assaults by men against them, many women find themselves in need of protection against assaults and most often turn to the police because there are few other legal or viable options. At the same time, low-income Black, Latina and Native American women can find themselves in need of protection from assault and, simultaneously, fear being dismissed, belittled or even assaulted by the very police they turn to for protection from assault. In instances of familial or intimate partner violence, women often fear that instead of acting as a third party mediator, police will brutalize the person that they want protection from and—simultaneously—want to protect.
This tension between needing an institution for protection and living in fear of that same institution is compounded among gay, lesbian, and transgender people, who experience scorn and sexual assault at the hands of police at even higher rates than cis-gendered women. While these tensions are disproportionately visited upon under- and working-class people, they exist across class lines based on identity or perceived identity.
One’s relationship with the police, then, is not merely a function of personal preference, but is deeply rooted in realities of class, race, sex and gender, or perceived gender, identity. One’s disposition towards the police, then, is not merely an individual choice, or a trend fueled by social media, but rather a consequence of lived class and group identity experiences. The pandemic of police brutality, therefore, cannot be addressed on the individual level, but only on the structural level.
For the majority of American history, the evolution of the structures and institutions of policing occurred not just outside of the participation of Black people, but in a manner and direction that is fundamentally antagonistic to the development of the Black community. The institution of policing in what would become the United States began as private patrols of white men tasked with capturing runaway slaves. Not incidentally, those patrols were often rewarded with the bodies of Black women. After the Civil War, slave patrols morphed into an organized government structure tasking white men with enforcing the Black Codes, a series of laws crafted to criminalize and control the population of former slaves, including any imagined infringement upon the sanctity of white women.
One’s disposition towards the police is not merely an individual choice, or a trend fueled by social media, but rather a consequence of lived class and group identity experiences.
The police are not simply here to stop crime and make our neighborhoods safe. The police as an institution with a defined role in society cannot be properly understood outside of the context of class, race, and gender.
Black Lives Matter activists worked for two years to pass the NEAR Act and get it fully funded. Now they’re working to see that it’s implemented correctly. The video above, edited by Malik Thompson, is of a march and rally from April 2017.
The NEAR (Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results) Act establishes a set of long-term programs and policies to address public safety in DC specifically through a public health lens. These programs and policies have been empirically proven to reduce shootings and violence in cities around the US.
In its fullest form, the NEAR Act would begin to de-emphasize the use of policing and force as the primary tactic for ensuring neighborhood safety in DC. It would protect vulnerable and minority (namely Black and Latino) residents in high-crime areas of our city from further harm. It would support individuals involved in potentially violent situations instead of turning to incarceration or violence to resolve the issue at hand. The policy would thus pave the way for the long-overdue transformation of these vulnerable populations and neighborhoods towards a deeper culture of safety, support, and opportunity.
WHY WE NEED YOU NOW:
After passing the DC Council unanimously in 2016, and being fully-funded in 2017, the NEAR Act is now in its next phase: implementation. Despite being fully-funded, most of the provisions in the NEAR Act have not been implemented. As such, the NEAR Act remains largely unfulfilled as promised in 2016.
In order for the NEAR Act to reach its full potential, it is going to require us as DC residents to make sure our elected officials fully and faithfully implement all of the comprehensive approaches in the NEAR Act. To do so, we want to create a corps of “NEAR Act Ambassadors” to show up to DC Council hearings, community events, ANC meetings, and candidate fundraisers and campaign events. In doing so, we have an opportunity to hold DC Council to their word and to begin the process of protecting the most vulnerable neighborhoods in our city from further violence with a better approach.
We would like to invite you to take part in a training that will equip you with the knowledge and skills to hold our DC elected officials to their word of fully implementing the NEAR Act, to move away from the failed approach of policing and incarceration, and to make DC an example for a better way to prevent and reduce violence while empowering and uplifting all of its residents.
THE TRAININGS:
The Stop Police Terror Project will be running a number of trainings in November for each Ward to provide interested individuals the skills and knowledge they need to be NEAR Act Ambassadors, to let our elected officials know that the NEAR Act is still alive in our minds as a priority for our city. Through these trainings, you will gain the knowledge and skills to mobilize your local neighborhoods/networks to show up to these events prepared to pressure our elected officials towards full implementation of the NEAR Act.
NEAR Act Ambassador Training Wednesday, November 8, 2017 We Act Radio Station 1918 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE
We encourage you to attend the event for your Ward if possible, as there will be some Ward-specific information covered. BUT, everyone is welcome at any of the trainings, so please come to the one that works best for you even if it isn’t your home Ward. If you don’t know what Ward you live in, you can find out here: https://planning.dc.gov/page/wards-district-columbia.
Please share these events with your networks, and let us know if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you at a training, and to working with you to ensure the promise of the NEAR Act becomes reality.
What do the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the Move Organization and Black Lives Matter have in common? They have all been denounced and delegitimized by the corporate establishment and mainstream media.
The Civil Rights and Revolutionary Struggles of the ‘60s and 70s challenged American racism, classism and sexism. They also disrupted our imperialist foreign policy. Eventually, the United States Government brought down or seriously humbled the Black Panthers, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the American Indian Movement, etc. Many leaders were jailed. Will the current struggle face the same fate?
In the late 1990s, a movement to free all U.S. political prisoners and prisoners of war began to take root. Several wide scale political actions took place in Washington, DC and Philadelphia. Filmmakers, Liane Scott, Joan Yoshiwara, Eddie Becker and Jorge Abeledo covered these events. The result is The Walls of Jericho and the Movement That’s Shaking Them, a two-hour documentary, that includes activists protesting on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, the Move 9, the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners, Black Panthers Russel Maroon Shoats and Eddie Conway and many more.
Revolutionary thinkers Kathleen Cleaver, Carl Dix, Chokwe Lumumba, Angela Davis, Ramona Africa all weigh in on the state of the movement and the related issues of police brutality and the prison industrial complex. Rank and file activists also share their knowledge and opinions. The Walls of Jericho serves as a popular education primer on political prisoners jailed as a result of the civil and human rights uprisings of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
It cannot be denied that in the last half century, racism, heterosexism, xenophobia, etc. have become less overt. But at the same time, US military misadventures migrated from Central America and Southeast Asia to the oil-rich Middle East. The planet’s resources continue to be assaulted. Police brutality and mass incarceration replaced Jim Crow. The revolutionary work that blossomed in the ‘60s and ‘70s is not finished. Tactics used to disrupt activism of the past are and will be used again.
We invite you to join us at this screening of The Walls of Jericho and the Movement That’s Shaking Them and the follow up discussion. In the spirit of Sankofa, we will learn from the past and move even more boldly into a future shaped by the people and not the forces of oligarchy.
Below is a segment from the documentary that focuses on police brutality.
So, you’ve been horrified by the many murders that we’ve witnessed in the media. You wonder what you can do? Here are some events coming up this week that could help to plug you into the movement.
You can also support the movement by supporting the Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles. Aaron Goggans , an organizer for the Black Lives Movement in the Washington, D.C. area, lays them out below.
Below is a slightly modified version of the guiding principles adapted from the recent Movement for Black Lives Convening. #2 was added in order to contextualize the principles for non-Black people working in solidarity for the movement. They help paint of picture of what the Movement for Black Lives is and should provide and excellent starting point for discussion.
1. ALL Black Lives Matter: Queer Black Lives, Trans* Black Lives, Formerly Incarcerated Black Lives, Poor/Working Class Black Lives, Differently abled Black Lives, Black Women’s Lives, Immigrant Black Lives, Black Elderly and Children’s Lives. ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER and are creators of this space. We throw no one under the bus. We Rise Together.
2. All of our work is part of a larger movement for collective liberation. The movement for collective liberation is a movement for liberation every human being on the planet from each and every system of thought, belief or action that oppresses them. This means that none of us are free until all of us are free. This also means that heart of this struggle is those who experience multiple forms of simultaneous oppression. Furthermore, this requires that all allies see their Black liberation work as part of their work towards their own liberation. Women’s Liberation, the overthrowing of capitalism, Asian Liberation, Queer Liberation, Trans*Liberation, Indigenous Liberation, the end of colonialism etc are all connected, vital, and must work together.
3. Thriving Instead of Surviving: Our vision is based on the world we want, not the one we are currently in. We seek to transform, not simply react. We want our people to thrive, not just exist. Think beyond the possible.
4. Experimentation and innovation must be built into our work. Embrace the best tools, practices and tactics and leave those behind that no longer serve us.
5. Evaluation and assessment must be built into our culture. Critical reflection must be part of all our work. We learn from our mistakes and our victories.
6. Principled Struggle can exist in a positive environment. We must be honest with one another by embracing direct, loving communication.
7. Love/Self Love is practiced in every element of all we do. Love and Self-Love must be a driver of our work and an indicator of our success. Without this principle and without healing, we will harm each other and undermine our movement.
8. 360 degree vision: We honor past struggles and wisdom from elders. The work we do today builds the foundations of movements of tomorrow. We consider our mark on future generations.
9. Self-care means we build resilient spaces by budgeting time, energy, and resources for healing. Self-care is a regular, consistent, intentional, and essential practice.
10. The most Directly Affected People are experts at their own lives and should be in leadership, at the center of our movement, and telling their stories directly.
11. Training and Leadership Development should be fundamental. Our movement must constantly grow and leadership must constantly multiply.
Washington, DC — The Movement for Black Lives continued protests to denounce recent killings of Black men on Saturday night in Washington, DC. The Stop Police Terror in DC Project, BlackLivesMatterDMV, BYP100 (Black Youth Project) and allies met at the African American Civil War Memorial and marched through city streets and into Georgetown. Once there they blocked traffic on the main M Street thoroughfare and then blocked Rock Creek Parkway.
The protest lasted over three hours, walking several miles through the city and resulted in no arrests. Many joined along the way, including activists, youth, and families.
The new protests came as video reports came to light of more killings by police of Black men. Delrawn Small, 38, was killed by an off-duty police officer in a road rage incident in Brooklyn, NY. A video published online countered claims by an off duty police officer that Smalls had allegedly punched the officer in the face. Smalls was shot less than two seconds after approaching the unmarked police vehicle.
Another man, Alva Braziel, 38, was shot 10 times by police in Houston, after he went looking for his horse which had gone missing. In that incident Houston police said that Braziel had brandished a firearm.
But Eugene Puryear, an organizer with The Stop Police Terror In DC Project, recognized that the Black Lives Matter movement had made progress.
“It’s only been a couple of years since we’ve been pushing, and already we’ve brought this issue to the forefront of the country,” said Puryear.
Yet a mass shooting of Dallas police officers during a protest Thursday night, which resulted in five police killed and seven wounded, cast doubt that unrest would end any time soon.
Puryear said that the Dallas incident was an unfortunate tragedy but was “not unexpected.”
“When you have a situation when over a thousand people are killed every year by police and no real resolution in the court system…it’s like putting a pot on boil and eventually it’s going to boil over,” said Puryear.
He said the increased national tension is moving the country towards a boiling stage, and change must now happen both socially and politically.
Reports of Black Lives Matter protests dominated the Sunday morning news. Protests were reported in major cities across the country as tensions rose over the spate of recent killings.
Area groups planned to hold a vigil at the African American Civil War Memorial Sunday night.
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