Police foundations across the country are partnering with corporations to raise money to supplement police budgets by funding programs and purchasing tech and weaponry for law enforcement with little public oversight.
Getting police departments to stop acting like an occupying army will require many fundamental changes, including much closer screening of job applicants who are veterans and ending their preferential hiring treatment.
As protests against police brutality grow, calls to abolish the police have become increasingly popular. While those demands have been shocking to many, they're not new. Calls for police abolitionism date to the earliest establishment of the police.
Mark Allen, Elena Marcheschi; Ethan Young; Steve A Greenfield; Tina Shannon; John Tarleton; David Berger; Bill Moberly; John Meyerson; Gail Joseph: Michael Munk; Saul Schniderman; Bob Feb; Richard J. Lorenz
Portside
Recent Portside posts have explored different sides of the repressive role of the police and whether or not police unions as they are constituted should remain within the labor movement. Here Portside readers respond.
African American Policy Forum
African American Policy Forum
Launched in 2014 by the African American Policy Forum and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, the #SayHerName campaign brings awareness to often untold stories of Black women and girls victimized by racist police violence.
Americans are getting a small taste of the fire and fury that the U.S. military...inflict on people overseas on a regular basis from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yemen and Palestine, and the intimidation felt by the people of Iran, Venezuela...
When demonstrations erupted across the country after George Floyd's death at the hands of police officers, Donald Trump portrayed the protesters as America's enemies. But the protesters posed no threat. They're the nation's true patriots.
With the mass outcry over the cop murders of George Floyd and so many other African Americans, it's worth reprising the review of a key 2017 book that sees even beyond defunding police to challenging the actual role of law enforcement in society.
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