50 years after the infamous demonstrations, participants and historians reflect. What lessons does the battle of Chicago have for us today? We asked three veterans of 1968 and one historian of the period to revisit this 50-year-old debate.
Blue Lives matter and always have, but in the US black and brown lives have always mattered less. For the third year in a row, police killed nearly 1,000 people while Congress considers legislation making harsh penalties for violence against police harsher.
Although tasers are frequently identified by police as a necessary alternative to avoid deadly force, a 2017 Reuters investigation found that, since the early 2000s, more than 1,000 people have died after the police stunned them.
White people keep calling the cops on black people for no reason. That’s dangerous.
Calling 911 means different things to white and black people.
The redemption of a racist cop in the awards season favorite will surely tug at the heartstrings of industry voters. But it’s unearned, manipulative and altogether offensive.
Frank Serpico, who testified against NYPD police corruption in 1972, joined more than 100 African American uniformed officers who demonstrated at a rally supporting NFL player Colin Kaepernick's objections to police abuse and inequality. "Kaepernick was not disrespecting the flag or our vets. I believe that Kaepernick was protesting a corrupt system of justice that allows some police to use excessive force, even the taking of innocent life, without consequences"
Amid protesting in St. Louis over the acquittal of a white police officer accused of murdering a black man after a car chase, a youth football team decided to take a knee during a pregame rendition of the national anthem. The team's coach said that the decision was made by the eight-year-olds following "a good teaching moment" about what was happening in the nearby city, and why.
Abolition of the carceral state is a fundamental political goal for the Left today: specifically, abolishing the carceral state’s logic and institutions. . Abolition is both a goal and a discourse: it informs the strategies we adopt, as well as the framework we use to critique the carceral state and describe alternatives.
Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, is being blackballed — itself a revealing phrase — from the National Football League with the collusion of the all-white owners. He is ostracized because a year ago he exercised his First Amendment right to free speech by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem, as a symbol of protest against police shootings of unarmed African-American men.
“The good stuff never applies to people of color, ever.”
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