Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps in policing
As we struggle to decrease the power of policing there are also positive and pro-active investments we can make in community health and well-being.
From Critical Resistance
Author: Henry Taylor
We Won’t Stop Until We Dismantle the Whole Racist System
In this moment of truth, we cannot lose focus on what’s important: Black Lives Matter.
By Lane Mullet
Bill de Blasio Has Failed the Test of This Moment
New York’s mayor has floundered in the face of stunning police violence—just like so many other mayors who aren’t prepared to rein in the cops.
By Elie Mystal
The History Of Police In Creating Social Order In The U.S.
NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Chenjerai Kumanyika, an assistant professor at Rutgers University, about the historical role of police in preserving power and social order.
Heard on All Things Considered
Police the Public, or Protect It? For a U.S. in Crisis, Hard Lessons From Other Countries
Those who want to remake a police model that has set off unrest and despair would do well to look at the experiences of Asia, Africa and Europe.
By Amanda Taub
Outside agitators? Where’s the proof?
From the WBEN Newsroom
Read the full article here.
“Politicians and police have been raising the spectre of “outside agitators” since the day protests began in Buffalo. For the most part, local media has amplified the message: Outsiders are slipping into town to incite violence and destruction. But arrest records suggest that narrative is not true.”
Scant proof of “outside agitators”
Politicians and police have little solid evidence to back up their claims that outside forces are behind protest disturbances here.
By Geoff Kelly
“The New Normal”
An interview with Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr.
“People are saying ‘We don’t want to go back to the old way. We don’t want to find, on the other side of the apocalypse, the same old type of society…that we saw before.'”
The people in power don’t look like the people hit hardest by Covid-19
By Frederika Schouten
Read the full article from CNN here.
“The pandemic, and the broad powers governors can exercise under emergency declarations, has underscored the limits of black political power less than four years after the nation’s first African American president left office. Black mayors now govern 35 cities with populations of 100,000 or more — or a little more than 11% of big cities, according to the African American Mayors Association. But the nation has no black state governors. And only two states have chief executives of color: New Mexico and Hawaii.”
We should applaud the Cuban health system
By Medea Benjamin
Read the full article from New Frame, here.
“It is truly inspiring that this small, poor island has basic health indicators equal, or better, to those of the world’s richest countries. This is even more remarkable after it has faced a brutal US blockade and sanctions for 60 years. Cuba’s infant mortality rate of four per 1 000 live births is lower than in the United States – and that’s according to the CIA!”