We can no longer ignore the fact that members of law enforcement have become a threat to the lives of black men and women.
Tom Lehrer -- We'll All Go Together When We Go. Detroit Man Beaten by Police Speaks Out. Boom Bust Boom Trailer. New York Subway's Danny Small. SEC's Andrew Bowden at Stanford – A Regulator for Sale?
Floyd Dent talks to Chris Hayes about being pulled from his car and beaten by police in Inkster, Michigan, as seen in dashcam video.
Where Right Wing Conspiracies Come From. Burned at McDonald's. Documentary: Peace Officer. Buffett's $1B March Madness Bet. LBJ & the Voting Rights Act.
Peace Officer is a documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of “Dub” Lawrence, a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state’s first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law.
The NYPD police officers union's outrageous assertion that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had “blood on his hands” in the murder of the two NYPD officers, is consistent with the reactionary role of police unions, which came to prominence in the wake of the civil rights movement. Police unions have played a powerful role in resisting all manner of police reforms, and in defending police officers, no matter how outrageous and racist their actions.
How is it that the differential in treatment for African Americans and Latinos not only persists, but continues to grow during what some commentators once described as a supposed ‘post-racial’ era? We must not permit the movement to be sidetracked.
The liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do. The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. They were not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century from the threat posed by the working class.
The 50-foot banner on our building’s call for an end to police violence is as urgent this week as it was last week; none of the issues have changed, and the tragic murder of two New York City police officers won't—can't—slow our efforts to end violence, impunity and abuse of power by law enforcement.
Talking about "police reform" obscures the task. Today's policies are, at the very least, the product of democratic will.
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