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A Short History of Cops Terrorizing Students

Alex S. Vitale The Nation
The assault at Spring Valley runs deeper than one bad cop - it's the latest product of the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the last 20 years there has been an explosion in the number of police officers stationed in schools. This has been one of the most dramatic and clearly counterproductive expansions of police scope and power in postwar America.

Tidbits - November 5, 2015 - Black Futures, #BlackLivesMatter; Socialism - Making a Comeback; the Left Movement and Sanders campaign; Syria; Wealth Data; Okinawa Missiles, Cuba and Nuclear War; Israel; BDS and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Black Futures, #BlackLivesMatter - Not More Cops; Harry Belafonte on Activism; Socialism - Making a Comeback; Building a Left Movement and the Sanders campaign; Mideast War Escalation - Syria; Wealth Data and U.S. Economic Inequality; China Pivot; Okinawa Missiles, Cuba and Nuclear War; Israel; 2016 elections, primaries and the military budget; satirical articles on Portside

"Broken Window Policies" are Discriminatory and Should be Opposed in U.S., Israel

M. Dove Kent, Donna Nevel, Rebecca Vilkomerson Tikkun Daily
As Jewish New Yorkers, we firmly believe that no community can ever be safe through the oppression of another. Your advocacy of broken windows policing while in Israel reinforces the Israeli government's ongoing policies of discrimination against Palestinians. The military occupation of Palestinian communities, political and economic exclusion ...and discriminatory and violent policing by the military and police do not increase the safety of the Jewish people.

Friday Nite Videos -- October 2, 2015

Portside
Ed Sheeran Performs “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Elizabeth Warren: Racial Justice. The Daily Show - Are All Cops Racist? Don't Worry Be Happy | Playing For Change. Oregon County Sheriff Vowed to Ignore Gun Control Laws.

Elizabeth Warren: Racial Justice

Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls for broad policing reform - including de-escalation training and body cameras for all police officers - and likens the Black Lives Matter movement to the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Elizabeth Warren Just Gave the Speech that Black Lives Matter Activists Have Been Waiting For

Wesley Lowery; Senator Elizabeth Warren Washington Post
Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights, said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent #BLM activist. Warren understands the protests as a matter of life or death - the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence...the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma

Why Police Can't Fix Urban America's Violent Crime Problem - Here's the Solution We Keep Overlooking

Maurice Jackson Washington Post
Systemic problems require systemic solutions. Police alone cannot stop urban violence; it requires action on every front. Rising poverty in the nation's capital has been experienced primarily by black and Latino residents. The average white family's income is $110,757, according to Census estimates. For black families it's $39,081. There's a growing income gap nationwide. This kind of disparity breeds hopelessness, which drives people to acts of desperation and violence.

Tidbits - September 3, 2015 - Unions and BDS; Farm worker Rebellion; Cornel West; Solidarity Confinement Victory; Drones in Dakota; lots of announcements...

Portside
Reader Comments: U.S. Trade Union Support for BDS; Pacific Coast Farm Worker Rebellion; Cornel West - Sanders, Trump and BLM; Selma - Site of National Dumping; North Dakota Legalizes Drone Strikes; Solidarity Confinement Victory in California; Israel, Iran; Sex Trade, Sex Workers and Amnesty International; Announcements: - New App for Worker Rights; Charleston, Chicago, Brooklyn, Bay Area, New York

Black Labor Organizers Urge AFL-CIO to Reexamine Its Ties to the Police

Sarah Jaffe Truthout
Police ... sometimes are workers who make very little money, oftentimes receive very little benefits in terms of the capitalist system that we live in and we want to recognize that . . . If police were to excise police brutality and anti-Blackness from their institution, I think we'd be having a very different conversation. And that's also a conversation that I would be happy to have.

In U.S., Confidence in Police Lowest in 22 Years

Jeffrey M. Jones Gallup
Americans' confidence in the police is down to 52%, an all time low since 1993 in the wake of the the Rodney King police beating. Although this Gallup report concludes that the 52% figure means that the "majority of American remain confident in this institution and have more faith in it than in most other institutions," put another way, nearly half of all Americans do not have faith in most institutions including the police. The figures are nevertheless noteworthy.
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