I Mourn for the 3,000 Lives Lost, and the 500,000 Iraqis that Died with Them

Everyone has a 9/11 story. 

Each person has a 9/11 story. A story of what they were doing that day. What they felt, what they saw. I have a 9/11 story, you do too. That’s been what is solidified in our grief and collectivized our trauma.

My mother was on day four of her first year of teaching. The schools surrounding the city had been called with bomb threats and they evacuated; bridges were blocked so full of traffic that she had to leave her car to walk to my father on the other side. They hugged and managed to make it home, while my sister and I were picked up early from school (I thought my sister had a doctor’s appointment—we both go home on doctor appointments). We ate dinner that night with smoke from the towers visible as far down as Central Jersey (at least, I think that’s what it was). I didn’t think she was going to make it home. My grandmother thought it was the end of the world.

Everyone has a story. And each year we mourn the loss of 3,000 people. 

Now I am older and have grown in a world that has faced the consequences of that attack. The battles and the endless war against an invisible terrorist that has only a menacing brown face. The WMDs that never seem to be where they were supposed to be. I learned of the increase of islamophobia and hatred for others that was excused because it was our grief. I, as a white child, did not have to lose my innocence to learn this lesson. 

The violence done for the sake of retribution when it was just hateful people with more of a “reason” to mobilize violence. The Patriot Act and the constant surveillance of black and brown people that was passed under the guise of freedom—of safety. Of law and order. The violent legacy passed from Bush to Obama to Trump, all for them to continue unabashed and unashamed. Airstrikes that kill mothers and fathers and radicalize young orphans. If you only see the murderous rampage of a country that has taken away so much, wouldn’t you hate that country too? 

I know of the half a million Iraqis that died (at least—because there could be more, we just don’t know about them) because elites weaponized our grief, spiraling it into a patriotism that justified a rich man’s war for oil. Of a military’s need for more resources and profit. Of a country’s need to destabilize the Middle East and expand its imperialistic thirst for blood. There is still more of that blood on our hands, we just won’t acknowledge it. Which country is the enemy today? Do you know? I don’t. 

Everyone has a 9/11 story. But we got to heal, and many will never get that chance, caught in the crosshairs of a resource war. 

We mourn the 3,000 souls lost. Now we must mourn 500,000 more. 

 

(Photo Credit: PRI / Reuters / Deanna Dent)

GWU Had Enough Money for Disney, GWU Had Enough Money for Swain: Why Doesn’t GWU Have Enough Money for its Workers and Students?

The George Washington University has boasted an endowment of nearly $1.7 billion. During the COVID-19 crisis that university has access to a $300 million line of credit. The university had attempted to hire Ms. Heather Swain—a notorious rape apologist who helped to cover the abuses Larry Nassar committed during her time at Michigan State University—but apparently now GW doesn’t have enough money to keep its faculty and staff; it doesn’t have enough money to help its most vulnerable students.

While the pandemic has raised issues with how students will be attending university—as well as how the university will be footing the bill and handling budget issues—the George Washington University stands alone in its cuts—cuts that will amount to layoffs, pay cuts, and a reduction in financial aid for students. In the middle of a pandemic, the university is taking money from students who need it most, and health insurance from their employees. 

How can LeBlanc justify the cuts? How can the GW administration call layoffs, pay cuts, and hiring freezers a more practical decision for the budget issues instead of looking into other methods of finding the money?

During his career, GWU President Thomas LeBlanc has made some questionable money decisions. These include spending half a million dollars on his inauguration in 2017, contracting the Disney Institute to administer campus climate surveys at a whopping $300,000 and extending that contract without further discussing the cost to the university community. LeBlanc further created an impression, if not a culture, of institutional nepotism by hiring eight people with ties to his former institution in Miami. 

The hiring freeze came just as LeBlanc announced the hiring of former VP of Communications at Michigan State University Heather Swain, who helped the university cover up its handling of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of athletes. The lack of transparency and poor vetting procedures almost had a known rape apologist once again in a position of power, once again having students at their mercy. Whether or not LeBlanc knew is immaterial; he and the administration cared so poorly for the vetting process and protection of their students that Swain almost secured a job at the university. A half-hearted apology followed by erasure of any announcement that the university had any contact with Swain merely added fuel to the fire. 

LeBlanc is no stranger to shaking the confidence of faculty, staff and students alike. 

Let us not forget his racially charged language in February, when, in a discussion about fossil fuel divestment, “LeBlanc attempted to make a point about the impracticality of majority rule by describing a hypothetical scenario where all students votes to ‘shoot all black people here’”. His apologies were meaningless when in the same breath, students faced attacks by police  when attempting to hold him accountable for his racist comments and demand the university divest from fossil fuel. 

And now the faculty and staff are facing more of this president’s cruelty. The response to the pandemic has included mass layoffs (nearly 70 staff positions in career services, facilities, and the Continuous Improvement and Business Advisory Services office), salary cuts (of $27 million in cuts to faculty compensation), and a suspension of retirement benefits. 

Students are fairing no better in the university’s budget issues. The 10% reduction in tuition for those students who did not return to campus included a recalculation of the students’ aid packages. The changes to the financial aid has made the tuition cost to some students—notably students from marginalized backgrounds—“insurmountable”. The outcry prompted another newly-hired-during-a-hiring-freeze VP—Jay Goff—to address the tuition cut and financial aid issues that students have been facing. 

As an alumna of this university, I am deeply concerned with the handling of the budgetary proposals by the administration. As a student, faculty and staff supported me so that I was successful during my university career. How can the administration, how can LeBlanc, demand excellence of that same faculty and staff while they fear lay-offs, salary cuts, and who knows what else? How can they effectively teach at a prestigious university while their livelihoods are in danger? How can they support students when they proposed a different way, only to be ignored by a man that has mismanaged and bloated those at the top? 

For our White Nation, Cannon already received justice

I come back into social media to find the story of a young boy that was brutally murdered. His murderer found after a manhunt, his mother calling and actively seeking for the death penalty. The silence from all of you on the deaths of children murdered by police—children who are black, brown, who have mental illness and learning disabilities—highlights your hypocrisy and desire to return to “normal”. Where you don’t have to confront the country’s racist past and present. Where you get to take comfort in your own privilege because your privilege benefits you personally. 

Where you don’t have to come to terms with your “guilt” or your own culpability in this nation’s white supremacist values. 

I watch as posts are made about a boy who was killed too early, by people who made no commentary about Mike Brown, or Trayvon Martin, or the children of Brittney Gilliam who were pulled from their vehicle in Aurora, CO because the police “mistook” her car for being stolen. Who have remained silent on George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain—a boy who played his violin for cats at his local animal shelter; for the lynching of Tamirat “Amani” Kildea in Morristown, NJ. So, my fellow white people, here is what I have to say to you:

You are taking the murder of a young white child by a black man as a call to disrupt the movement for black lives. You are actively working in tandem with white supremacy in equating no justice being done when, for a white nation, our definition of justice has most definitely been done. 

Breonna Taylor

Was the perpetrator arrested? Yes.

Is he currently awaiting trial? Yes. 

Will he face a jury where he may well face the death penalty for his crimes? Yes. 

I’m curious, then, what more is it you’re asking for? 

Aiyana Stanley-Jones

Are you asking for justice for the murders of black children too? Where were you when Tamir Rice was killed for having a toy gun? Where are your hashtags for the punishment of the officers that killed Aiyana Stanley Jones? Your anger over the Kameron Prescott, who was killed by police on December 23, 2017? The black and brown boys and girls who have been murdered with no accountability from the boys in blue? 

For Breonna Taylor has not received her “justice”. Elijah McClain remains the butt of jokes for police officers in Aurora. Gilliam got an apology and the promise of “age-appropriate therapy” for her children held at gunpoint by police officers. On hot asphalt, face-down. George Floyd’s death stopped being a crying call for change after some buildings burned to the ground. Not to mention, his killers got to post bail. Sessoms will not be given that luxury. 

You had better think, very carefully, about how you want to be remembered for decades to come. When the progress for civil rights does win, and we look back on this time as a reflection on how we could have done better. Do you want to be those who have actively worked against a movement that focused on valuing the black people as deserving of justice? 

Elijah McClain

Because right now, you are the villains of this story. Your moderate response to racism and white supremacy is your calling card, where the valuation of property over black people is paramount. Where you want to support the movement, but “All Lives Matter”, not just Black Lives Matter. Your All Lives Matter sure sounds like White Lives Matter Most. 

(Photo Credit 1: BBC) (Photo Credit 2: Mother Jones) (Photo Credit 3: The Cut)

In New Jersey, it’s a fight between the DOE and teachers: Teachers Are Poised to Win!

Several weeks ago, my sister and I had a rather uncomfortable conversation with our mother about her return to school in the September. Leading up to it, the state had been adamant that students be in the classrooms learning—even in the middle of a pandemic. Jersey City and other schools seemed poised to bring my mother and other teachers back into overcrowded and severely underfunded buildings with no safety protocol and no clean water. So, we had the conversation

I should not have to have a conversation about what we should do, as her daughters, if my mother got sick. Does she want to be resuscitated or put on life support if she is deteriorating? How long does she want to be on a ventilator if her lungs get that bad? Has she got her will in order? She didn’t sign anything from the school district, did she?

We had this conversation because we knew that social distancing cannot take place in a school where my mother teaches nearly thirty students a day. Kids would not have been required to wear masks, but mother would have had to. They needed to be six feet apart. Can rooms handle thirty kids separated by six feet? Or what about if the classroom was split, and fifteen students attended in the early morning and fifteen attended in the afternoon? Teachers would still be interacting with 30 students, possibly spreading COVID to students from the first half of the day to the other. 

The absurdity of the school district for going through hoops to try and open cannot be ignored. Parents in poverty who cannot afford to keep their children home because they have work will be forced to risk their children’s health while parents in the increasingly gentrified city can. The demand to bring students back is only a demand to return their parents to exploitative work without policies in place that would have helped those families to begin with. New Jersey is the fifth wealthiest state in the country. In certain neighborhoods of Jersey City alone (Liberty Park), the median income level for residents is $139,750; 2.54x times the national median. We could have funneled the wealth of our state into funds that New Jerseyans could have used to stay home with their children: universal basic income, cancelling rents and mortgages, and funding mutual aid programs for those in need; we could have thoroughly cleaned and updated old school buildings and taken over electrical grids to give people power and free internet access. I bet, we could even have created a model of universal healthcare so that residents didn’t fear going to the doctor if they exhibited the symptoms of COVID, or the hospital if it were too severe. Instead, we did the bare minimum and are angered when people want to demand that they have to go back to work—and then blamed everything on the people who were getting an extra six hundred dollars from unemployment, even if they were laid off. And we’ve asked the business in the state to foot the bill, as philanthropic. I wonder how much tax write-offs they’ll get. 

I heard Bon Jovi opened a third Soul Kitchen in the state. Well, Bon Jovi wouldn’t have had to open a third soup kitchen if we taxed Bon Jovi relative to his income and spent that money on creating policies that address food insecurity. 

I watched as Senator Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat that helped shape Christie’s tax breaks during his administration while demonizing teachers for asking too much from the state, being hailed as a hero of New Jersey Public Schools during the pandemic. Was this the same man? Yes. But his collective amnesia is striking given everything he did to make sure the schools didn’t have what they needed to face this crisis. What a hero. 

I, as I’m sure many children of teachers are doing right now, am watching in horror as the fears of the faculty and students are consistently being ignored for the rush to return to school. The push to have in person classes, the desire to go back to normal. And this is not just the great state of New Jersey, which has worked hard in being one of the very few states to limit the amount of exposure to COVID on their citizens (though our rate of transmission is on the rise yet again). This is everywhere: from New York City, to Los Angeles and Chicago. 

And while city council’s and politicians demand schools reopen, teachers won’t go down without a fight. 

The most militant organizing is coming from the teachers and their unions over the safe return to the classroom. In New York, teachers brought coffins and a guillotine to the NYC DOE in protest to the city’s reopening plan. Educators and parents were appalled by De Blasio’s insistence that it was safe the open the country’s biggest school system amid the pandemic. 

In Chicago, Mayor Lightfoot and the Chicago Public Schools announced the decision to begin the school year with fully-remote learning, with the tentative goal to get students, “back to class, at least part-time by November.” The decision was, maybe not so coincidentally, came as the possibility of a possible strike vote from the Chicago Teachers Union began and as COVID-19 cases in Chicago trended upwards. 

These trends of teachers’ organizing is not an anomaly, it has created a storm. What I have been arguing with my mother is the fact that she—and her fellow teachers—have power in the union and the decision to keep her students and herself safe. Educators have always understood that the withholding of their labor can create positive changes in their lives and the lives of their students. Now their turning their power on making sure children in low income areas remain safe and healthy, with no risk of getting sick:

In New York City, parents, students, and teachers will be marching from their union headquarters down to the Department of Education. In Los Angeles, activists are organizing a car caravan, first outside the LA Chamber of Commerce and then around the Los Angeles Unified School District building. “We’re kicking it off at the LA Chamber because even during Covid, this is a time when a lot of corporations and Wall Street are making record-breaking profits,” explained Sylvana Uribe, a spokesperson for Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a progressive group participating in the protest. In Philadelphia and Baltimore, teacher unions are calling on Comcast to improve the quality of its service and make it more affordable for families. In Phoenix, activists are planning to demonstrate outside their state capitol building, where educators can write letters to their elected officials about how they feel going back to school or, if they want, write their imagined obituaries.

Immediately after the stirrings from teachers unions across the country, the superintendent in Jersey City voted on August 6, 2020, to move to remote learning for the month of September; I am relieved that my mother will not have to face her potential mortality for her job. And I wonder if it is because we’ve woken a giant in red that the superintendent even backed down. 

Teachers and their unions are waking up and ruffling their feathers, ready for a fight. And this is a fight that educators are poised to win. After all, it is between life and death; why should students and educators die for Trump and DeVos? 

 

(Photo Credit 1: NY Post / Dan Herrick) (Photo Credit 2: Al Jazeera)

 

The Police State Has Come Home to Roost

As the massive uprisings have shocked a (white) nation, centering the injustices and abuses that black people face at the hands of the police, a disturbing trend is emerging from the Trump administration: bringing in federal agents to literally kidnap protestors off the streets and “arrest” them for protesting. 

Later announced as Operation LeGend, these squads of Gestapo militarized jocks have eschewed whatever Constitutional Oath they were probably sworn to take, have tear gassed peaceful protestors, Moms, Dads, and an army Vet who came to the streets of Portland to call them out on their hypocrisy—and are making their way to Albuquerque, Kansas City, and Chicago. The (mostly white) American people are shocked by the fascist tactics of Trump and his last desperate re-election bid as a tough on crimes president. 

Where is the crime? I don’t rightfully know, honestly. Is destroying federal property and taking down racist monuments violence in the face of the constant murder of black and brown people? Is setting fire to police stations violence when those same police have beaten and tortured those protestors? Is destroying buildings violence when it was the ancestors of those black people, laboring as less-than-human and enslaved, that built those buildings to begin with? 

“Crime” aside, these tactics are not new, and they should not be surprising. Activists, organizers, black and brown communities have been raising this alarm for years. This is not simply the symptom of a Trump candidacy in a spiral as he desperately attempts to hold on to the last shred of power in the final months of a cataclysmic re-election campaign. This is not simply his desire to reallocate attention and energies away from the rising cases of Covid-19 and the preventable deaths that are on his hands (will he care? No. Probably not, but it might hurt his bottom line once he leaves office). This is not merely his want to push the story away from the millions of people laid off, unable to access unemployment benefits in a spiraling economic downturn the likes of which none of us have lived through. 

And this did not start with Trump. 

We are reckoning with the consequences of allowing Trump free reign of a terrorist organization that has been steadily developed and trained, militarized and weaponized during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administration. Yes, a bipartisan expansion of the police state that has diverted funds away from our education, our public transportation, our healthcare and so much more into the hands of the Pentagon and weapons contracts and military equipment. 

We’ve perfected a machine that a monster like Trump will use with absolute glee.  

For years, we’ve watched ICE and DHS officials sweep men, women and children into immigrant detention centers, deny them their rights and deport them back to countries they might not have lived in for decades; Trump’s deportation policies are a continuation of the Obama Administration’s own. We’ve listened to stories of constant monitoring of our Muslim brothers and sisters post-9/11 by the FBI and CIA, with the blessings of Democratic and Republican Representatives-the Patriot Act is supported in Congress with little blowback while it increases constant military surveillance of ourselves, our neighbors, and black and brown communities.

During the Obama Administration, police in military garb clashed with Indigenous protestors at Standing Rock, who were fighting against the contamination of their water source, resulting in indigenous people being pelted with tear-gas, rubber bullets, arbitrary arrests and trumped up charges. All protestors faced the same violence that Portland is facing now. Nearly four years later. 

We’ve watched the budget for our Defense Department balloon into a money guzzling force of chaos, and little remorse for whatever constitutional barometers it was meant to hold. Whatever the Pentagon couldn’t use anymore was bankrolled into the police; we’ve decked out our men and women in uniforms with tanks, machine guns, and weapons like long range acoustic devices that is capable of causing hearing loss. 

And if people weren’t affected by the violence faced at the hands of poor communities, of black communities, of undocumented communities, they didn’t care. What use was there? The police were still there to protect them! 

We were white! 

As more federal agents are deployed around the country, as more Moms and Dads speak out—and this is not negating the black mothers who have always been there, at the front of the protests—as veterans come out of retirement to put their bodies on the line, we must come to the conclusion that the full force of our ignorance, our purposeful blinders will lead the police to turn on us. 

To put it simply, it has come home to roost. Are we prepared to meet it? 

(Photo Credit 1: AP / WUSA9) (Photo Credit 2: Reveal)

In New Jersey, Incarcerated Pregnant Women’s Lives Don’t Matter

In New Jersey, a liberal government is grappling with its own sense of cruelty against incarcerated women. A suit filed in the US District Court for New Jersey claims that officers shackled the ankle of a 30-year-old woman identified as Jane Doe to her hospital bed while she was in labor. She was forced to wear the shackles even while she experienced painful contractions, kept her from turning on her side or moving at all to relieve the pain and—when nurses questioned the need for the shackles—officers refused to remove them and remained in the room even while doctors performed invasive medical procedures. She continued to be restrained while recovering from an emergency C-section and was also not allowed to walk the hallways as part of the healing process. 

The use of shackles during childbirth was banned in the state as far back as 2017. Yet, as Jane Doe was sent to jail on a probation violation in 2018 after relapsing, she was shackled during childbirth, and afterwards. 

The process of shackling, not only de-humanizing, takes a mental toll on women. In a 2017 report from the American Psychological Association, “Women subjected to restraint during childbirth report severe mental distress, depression, anguish, and trauma.” Women who are incarcerated tend to already have suffered more childhood traumas and shackling them during childbirth is likely to make conditions such as PTSD worse. 

New Jersey, in the wake of Christie, has worked to make progressive reform to address the growing number of women who are incarcerated, including the issues related to shackling pregnant women while receiving medical care, but these bills fall short on the issues that are created from the process of criminalization to begin with. Jane Doe would not have had to file a lawsuit to allege an illegal shackling had she not been arrested to begin with. She, along with many New Jersey women, are part of a vicious cycle of recidivism where they will constantly be in contact with the criminal justice system. 95 percent of people incarcerated in state prison will be released, but 76.6 percent of them will be rearrested within five years. And in New Jersey, it will cost more to keep these people in prison that it would to give them the help that they need, whether it be financial help, drug rehabilitation, mental health access, etc. (each person in incarceration costs the state $60,000 a year). 

Even the bills proposed by the state, while valiant in their efforts to address the crisis, only do so much as to alleviate the symptoms that are caused by incarceration. Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle of Bergen County, proposed legislation to prohibit the use of restraints on pregnant incarcerated people during labor and immediately after childbirth, only in cases where the woman (who is in active labor, mind you), presents a substantial flight risk or some other “extraordinary medical or security circumstance dictates that restraints are needed to ensure the safety and security of the prisoner, the employees of the facility or medical facility, other prisoners, or the public”. Again, the extenuating circumstances are loopholes so that women, in active and painful labor, are still restrained during labor. I wonder at what point we’re going to acknowledge that women will not attempt to flee when they can barely stand. 

Other bills have attempted to show that same compassion to incarcerated women, the fastest growing population in the criminal justice system, while reminding those women that they still are prisoners and are only given crumbs at the benevolence of the state at large. 

The Dignity for Incarcerated Primary Caretaker Parents Act, would ensure all incarcerated women in New Jersey receive free feminine hygiene products, expressly ban shackling and eliminate solitary confinement for expectant mothers. The bill would expand visiting hours and free phone calls for incarcerated mothers and would create a pilot program allowing overnight visits for mother who are able to meet certain requirements so that they can bond with their newborns.

While we should applause some compassion for incarcerated women, and incarcerated mothers, we need to keep fighting for a day where we meet a pregnant woman who has relapsed with compassion and public health solutions and not arrest or jail. 

The Black Lives Matter Movement has brought to the surface a longstanding dehumanization of people at the hands of the criminal justice system; those officers didn’t care that Jane Doe was in active labor or recovering from a C-section. To the police, Jane Doe was another inmate that deserved to be handcuffed because she was outside of the prison walls, just like any other officer would do to an “inmate”. 

Defunding the police means defunding the prisons means abolishing the prisons that house these women. $60,000 per incarcerated persons can correspond trauma informed therapists and love and safety. 

Can we reimagine what $60,000 per incarcerated individual in the state of New Jersey (there are 39,000 people in various correctional facilities in the state alone)? Can we think about the various ways we can help those people instead of locking them up and subjecting them to a life of imprisonment and dehumanization? Can we literally comprehend how much help $2,340,000,000 (more than $2 billion!) can buy us? Can we imagine a day where there will be no more Jane Does? Where the lives of incarcerated pregnant women matter? 

 

(Image Credit 1: The Guardian / Molly Crabapple) (Photo Credit: Facebook / Stop Shackling Pregnant Women) (Image Credit 2: Prison Policy Initiative)

No, the Response to Police Violence is not “Hire More Women”

 

Source: CNN

Listen. Please, CNN. 

The concept that to reform an institution that has a history of systemic racism, sexism, and classism is to add in more “diversity hires” is not the answer. 

The answer is to dismantle the institution. Not reform, not more trainings, not more money—and no, not hire more women. 

I have one name that can counter your argument that women de-escalate: Botham Jean. Well I have one name and an explosion in cases of police brutality where women have entered the police force to counter arguments that an increase to women’s participation would decrease police violence. 

Botham Jean was murdered by off-duty police officer Amber Guyger, after Guyger entered the wrong apartment and shot Jean in his own home. Where was the de-escalation? Where was the communication? There was none. 

To argue that the gender disparity within the police force contributes to the rise in police brutality (or, maybe a gender equal police force would lower instances of police violence), is not valid given the current climate on the excess in militarization of the police. Let’s also look into the essentialist notion that women are more socialized towards gentleness, compassion, and de-escalation with more gendered understandings of why women are not counted in police killings, reported in police violence statistics, or even reprimanded by the police force when excessive use of force is being reported. 

For every police force that has worked to close the gender gap for police officers, there are stories circulating around the country of excessive use of force, violence, and pepper spraying of protestors who are fighting to end the killings of Black people. 

In New York, videos have surfaced of police cars driving into protestors, pepper spraying people and arresting people who are working during curfew without a second thought after protests erupting in the wake of George Floyd’s death. 

In Chicago, hailed for the second largest inclusion rate of women in the force, police were photographed spraying pepper spray on protestors on State Street, were accused of beating and slamming protestors to the ground after police began use of excessive force on peaceful protestors. Accusations also arose of them targeting darker skinned protestor, Malcolm London, chasing him and beating him with batons before charging him with aggravated battery. 

Detroit police officers are among the deadliest in the United States, leading the nation in the rate of fatal shootings by police. That rate Is 2 ½ times higher than New York’s rate and 1 ½ times Los Angeles’. An officer in Detroit was suspended for brutalizing a journalist during a Black Lives Matter protest. 

These are only a few instances where correlation does not imply causation. Just because women are being hired into police forces, it does not mean that instances of force will decrease. Los Angeles has been notorious for instigating violence against anyone on the street during protests, most notably by hitting an unhoused man in the eye with a rubber bullet as a protest passed him. 

Source: 7 News

How could women be represented in such low statistics of police violence? Maybe it has to do with a combination of factors, including the gendered aspect of policing as well as survivors and victims being unwilling to come forward regarding their brutalization. Maybe it’s from the unwillingness of the department to investigate women police officers, because as the article ascertained, “Women generally tend to be socialized to talk rather than shout, negotiate rather than bully and empathize rather than order”. When we think that women are still gentle and all around harmless, the idea that they have hurt someone might not even warrant an investigation. 

And let us not forget, that “every person is different”. Women are not a monolith that are socialized to behave kindly and only with love; that is a form of liberal feminist jargon that argues the world can change if every part of public institutions is 50% women. White women all over this country have taken it upon themselves to police the very behavior of Black people and limit their access to the public safely. In that instance, they are not the empathetic, gentle ear that can de-escalate a situation (especially one that they started).

No, women did not invent de-escalation. 

Nor should the police, in all their forms and all their genders, be an operation for community care and healing. The everyday policing should not be, “About social services: domestic violence cases, dealing with people’s mental health problems, getting victims to open up, negotiating”. That is because police were never meant to be these things. They were never meant to help people with mental illness, they were never trained for social services, if they were even trained properly at all. The history of the police force, again, is a history of violent repression of Black people and laborers attempting to fight for better working conditions. They are the arms of the state to control the masses, to suppress any insurrection against the brutality of society. We have continued to fund and militarize police and then act surprised when they commit the acts that they have been sanctioned to use.

As liberals continue their call for reform, the liberal feminist mindset will be “We’ll be safe with women police.” The ultimate co-option will be reform that puts women in the police force at 50% and then call it a success even as police continue brutalizing protestors. 

Defunding the police is the aim; abolition is the goal. There should not be the closing of the gender gap of police because there should not be police to begin with. They are vestiges of an old world that just will not die. 

We need to reimagine who will be taking over social services because it should not be police; should not be policemen, should not be policewomen, should not be gay police, should not be straight police, should not be trans police, should not be police. Abolitionists have already imagined this world for us, and it is about time we listened

We do not need to reform the police: we need to abolish them. 

So, You Want to Defund the Police? Start by Busting the Police Union

All around the world, people are waking up to the idea that the criminal justice system has been designed to brutalize and punish black and brown individuals—from videos of black men and women dying at the hands of police officers, to tear gas and other human right abuses being levied at protestors demanding solutions to police brutality—the system of police is not meant for the oppressed class. Defunding and demilitarizing them is only the first step for the realization of abolition; but how do we begin to understand the power behind the police? 

Short answer, it’s their union.

Long answer, it’s the power that the police unions over the years have been able to amass, even at the backing of major labor organizations (most disappointingly, being on part of the labor council by the AFL-CIO). The influence that they wield when making policy recommendations and funding politicians really should not be ignored. If we are looking toward defunding as the first steps in the goal of abolition, then the potential backlash from cop unions and their supporters should be researched, analyzed and dismantled before they can halt the movement towards defunding.

Already, we are seeing leaders of cop unions attempting to tamper down criticism by creating even more scandal for themselves and revealing the racism that is so deeply ingrained in the system of policing and the criminal justice system. The head of a Baltimore police union called Black Lives Matter protesters a “lynch mob”. In Philadelphia, another referred to demonstrators as “a pack of rabid animals”. A democratically elected black prosecutor in St. Louis is a “menace to society” who must be removed- “by force” if necessary, because she was in favor of police reform. And yet another union president, in NYC (where police have been absolute murderous with protesters), begged to not be treated, “like animals”. They’re attempting to put a stop to any reforms—no matter how small and miniscule—and they’re powerful enough to stop them. One single police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races in 2014.

Police unions are the strongest and most powerful unions in the country. Their ability to negotiate contracts that give them almost full immunity when their members harm and kill someone is abhorrent, “Typically, such contracts are chock full of special protections that are negotiated behind closed doors. Employment contract provisions also insulate police from any meaningful accountability for their actions and rig any processes hearings in their favor; fired cops are able to appeal and win their jobs back, even after the most egregious offenses. When Daniel Pantaleo, an NYPD officer who was involved in the 2014 murder of Eric Garner, was finally fired, the police union immediately appealed for his reinstatement and threatened a work slowdown.” 

It is time for all labor organizations, no matter how small, to not only condemn the violence of the police force but actively work to dismantle an institution that’s history is stained with the blood of the working class and immigrants. As noted in Kim Kelly’s impassioned article, “No More Cop Unions”, the history of police violence has been against workers during strikes or at protests, “Despite their union membership, police have also been no friend to workers, especially during strikes or protests. Their purpose is to protect property, not people, and labor history is littered with accounts of police moonlighting as strikebreakers or charging in to harass or injure striking workers. The first recorded strike fatalities in U.S. history came at the hands of police, who shot two New York tailors dead as they tried to disperse. During the Battle of Blair Mountain, the police fought striking coal miners on the bosses’ behalf. In 1937, during the Little Steel Strike, Chicago police gunned down 10 striking steelworkers in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre. In 1968, days after Dr. Martin Luther King addressed a group of sanitation workers, Memphis cops maced and assaulted the striking workers and their supporters, killing a 16-year-old boy.” The president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumpka, a former president of United Mineworkers of America harshly criticized the police for engaging in violence against striking minors. 

The AFL-CIO is now facing calls to disaffiliate from its association with the International Union of Police Associates (representing over 100,000 law enforcement employees as well as emergency personnel) from 21 council members from the Writers Guild of America East, citing the policies and the actions of the police union as being consistent with, “authoritarianism, totalitarianism, terrorism and other forces that suppress individual liberties and freedoms.” The AFL-CIO has already disaffiliated from other unions in the past, including the Teamsters, SEIU, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The federation has already disaffiliated some powerful unions, so it has the potential to kick out an organization that has no business calling itself a union. 

This is but one step in demanding the end of police violence and terror; this is but one piece of an interlocking system that needs to be collapsed, but it will be a preemptive strike in the already powerful attempt to squash legitimate demands to doing away with police.

If you are a union member, or someone interested in demanding the end of AFL-CIO’s association with the International Union of Police Associations, please sign this petition from No Cop Unions. Please also encourage your union local to condemn the violence against protesters or issue a statement in support of Blacks Lives. Solidarity means solidarity with the workers and all oppressed members of society, not solidarity with the muscle of the state and the capitalists. 

Workers of the World Unite! We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Chains!

 

(Photo 1 Credit: ABC News) (Photo 2 Credit: The Guardian / Star Tribune)

The privilege of whiteness is the ability to take up as much space as we want, without recourse

The privilege of whiteness is the ability to take up as much space as we want, without recourse, to do whatever we want. We are seeing the stark differences between white protestors angry over the loss of luxury and Black protestors angry over the continued murder of Black men and women, and how those white people are able to act in a space they think is ONLY for them.

While white people still are trying to defend a police officer that has had a history of brutality against Black and Brown bodies and criticize justifiable rage over it, other white people are carrying AR-15s and machine guns into state Capitol buildings and able to take up as much public space as they want with no teargas; no pepper spray or rubber bullets; no death.

White women are able to threaten to call the police on an “African American man” because they know the police will protect their ability to take up space, and that that Black man will potentially be harmed and killed because she did.

White people in New York City will congregate en masse in parks. They will congregate without masks, and they will receive masks from the police while Black people are ticketed and tased for not having one. Even the process of wearing a mask can be deadly for Black men and women.

A Black man was jogging and three white vigilantes, without provocation, murdered him in broad daylight. The police did nothing. White people jog with little fear, save for the dangers of reckless motorists.

A Black woman couldn’t sleep in her own bed without being murdered by police and her partner arrested for defending himself.

White people, start learning our privilege. Stop protecting institutions that literally were created to maintain a white racial hierarchy. Start understanding how much space we take up and stop defending those that try to keep it that way.

(Photo Credits: Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune)

Who are essential workers in the pandemic? Grocery store clerks, teachers, nurses, women.

While the President lies, downplays, and now considers easing up on the social distancing rule despite public health officials’ warnings, we are in the midst of a pandemic. 

People who are non-essential workers are being told to stay home, to telecommute and teleconference. To work from their personal laptops and flatten the curve.  

We’re hearing this everywhere. Non-essential, non-essential. But who are the essential? Who are the critical workers that are leaving their homes and risking infection, whether they want to or not, because they provide a public good? 

They’re teachers, nurses, EMTs, grocery store clerks. In short, they’re women.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve learned several valuable lessons (well, not really. I knew them already, but I really hope this experience radicalizes those who did not). And that is who should be considered valuable and essential workers in times of crisis. What I mean is this:

Grocery store workers/truck drivers/warehouse workers deserve a Congressperson’s salary, with health insurance and benefits and a pension plan that rivals how much Paul Ryan makes after he retired from the House. Those workers have spent two to three weeks stocking shelves, taking care of people despite the risk of infection, and have been donating to food banks so that local people can have food. We’ve been doing more than any person in Congress is doing right now.

Teachers need a Presidential Salary. I don’t know, is it $275,000? or over $400,000? Either way, teachers and schools provide more services than the government does for the impoverished in their area! Children are fed, given emotional care, taught and, in the case of NYC, provide literally a place for homeless children to stay!

And hospital workers? Nurses? EMTs? Forget about it. CEO salary. And I’m not talking small to mid-size business here. I’m talking about Bob Iger’s compensation before he ducked out of the Walt Disney Company. You are keeping people alive, despite the fact there might not be enough beds, or ventilators, or even face masks! While other jobs are able to work from home, to stop the spread of the disease, you are working under extreme conditions to make sure people get to go home, alive and healthy, to their families.

Those are the people who are essential. When this is over, when this crisis is averted (and even now), maybe it’s time to start demanding we be treated as essential workers.

 

(Photo Credit: John Autey / Pioneer Press) (Image Credit: Bored Teachers)