The reason for featuring this post is to look at an example of activism/movement building that made headway. But having said that, I am not enthusiastic about the author’s claims about the supposed effectiveness of the “defunding the police” demand. It was taken too literally by opponents as a push for no police at all, and some supporters even backed that idea. That demand has generated pushback from the Dems, with Biden promising to increase police budgets (and I don’t buy the idea that embedding social workers will produce more judicious policing; look at how embedding journalists in military forces is a deliberate strategy by governments to generate friendly accounts).
It would have been more persuasive to give concrete examples of what “defunding” would mean, like entirely reconstituting the police force, as was done successfully in Camden, NJ, or getting rid of the budget for military toys and related training. Note that the Pentagon recently confirmed that giving military equipment to local police forces was unproductive, save that some sold it for real money to other police units.
Although correlation is not causation, the transfer of military equipment to police parallels change in police training to a paramilitary approach. From a June Atlantic article:
To be sure, federal military-surplus transfers like those through the Defense Department’s 1033 Program do little good, and much harm: Police departments obtaining used Army filing cabinets at cost isn’t cause for concern, but there’s no earthly reason for small-town cops to wear military fatigues, ride around in mine-resistant Humvees, or carry bayonets. Studies suggest that police departments that receive such equipment see no measurable improvement in officer safety or crime rates, but greater quantities do seem to correlate with higher rates of officer-involved shootings and reduced public trust.By Nara Roberta Silva, a sociologist with a Ph.D. from the State University of Campinas, Brazil. She is a Core Faculty Member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where she researches and teaches on social movements and democracy, global Marxism, post/anti-colonialism, and social theory. Originally published at openDemocracy
Grievances are commonly pointed out as great protest and movement sparkers. When protests erupted after George Floyd’s death, it was common to hear in news analyses and protesters’ testimonials that Floyd’s fate was “the last straw”. But while blatant racism certainly inspired the protests, it is crucial to consider other elements for a more accurate picture of their rise.
The “last straw” argument is based on two factors. First, Minneapolis diligently adopted the Obama-era reform playbook following other high-profile police killings, including Jamar Clark’s in 2015 and Philando Castile’s in 2016. For five years, the city has implemented a range of measures including training officers in de-escalation tactics, the hiring of more African-American cops and early-warning systems to identify problem officers. But none of that prevented a white officer with a record of complaints from placing his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.
Second, by late May, it was evident that the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic was distributed unequally. African Americans and Latinos are getting sick and dying at higher rates, even in areas where they make up a smaller portion of the population. In this context, the death of George Floyd was a strong symbolic representation of the scandalous disposal of racialised bodies in the current United States.
The current struggle for racial justice does not imply that racism has gotten worse – even in light of the atrocious state-of-affairs. Floyd’s murder and the disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths among African Americans could be considered sparkers, but what made the spark become a fire?
by Nara Roberta Silva and Yves Smith, openDemocracy via Naked Capitalism | Read more:
