/news

Et un autre, en Grande-Bretagne cette fois

▻https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/third-of-british-young-people-say-israel-acting-like-nazis/ar-BB1hd3T5

A third of British young people say that Israel is acting like the Nazis, research for an anti-Semitism charity shows.

In polling conducted in December, 34 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds agreed with the statement “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews”. The result among all adults was 30 per cent.

The figure marks a record high in the annual survey. In 2022, 23 per cent of Britons agreed with the statement, along with 31 per cent of young people.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), which commissioned YouGov to conduct the research, said that anti-Semitic rhetoric since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7 was radicalising young people.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, described the figures as “deeply worrying”, adding: “The research released today sadly confirms what many of us have long known – that young people are being exposed to, and therefore accepting narratives and rhetoric that is anti-Semitic.”

J’adore la méthode qui consiste à soi-même poser une question comparant les méthodes israéliennes aux nazis, ce qui est d’entrée de jeu une saloperie, puis à se plaindre que des gens fassent l’association…

►https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1753349457926598656/vid/avc1/720x1280/403IHXBsgXpNdZbb.mp4

Et la question est posée par un institut qui prétend lutter contre l’antisémitisme !!!

Israel-Gaza war live updates: Israeli military says pause in fighting is over; airstrikes resume in Gaza - The Washington Post
▻https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-gaza-war-live-updates-israeli-military-says-pause-in-fighting-is-over-airstrikes-resume-in-gaza/ar-AA1kP7lB

The Israel Defense Forces’ announcement that it was resuming operations came as Blinken’s motorcade sped out of his hotel in Israel on its way to the Tel Aviv airport, where he planned to fly to Dubai to take part in climate talks and further discussions with Arab nations about Gaza’s future. Asked onboard his plane, Blinken declined to comment about the end of the pause.

Ryan Grim sur X : l
▻https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1722004700239642975

Jamie Raskin is on the House floor describing how unusual it would be in congressional history to censure a member of Congress for their speech.

Stepping back, it is indeed incredible to move a censure vote for speech, no matter the speech.

That it’s happening to the only Palestinian member of Congress while Gaza is being flattened makes it that much more extraordinary. What a dark moment.

23:00 GMT
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/7/israel-hamas-war-live-one-month-of-conflict-10000-dead-in-gaza

Vote to rebuke US Congresswoman Tlaib expected tomorrow

As we’ve been reporting throughout the day, the US House of Representatives is pushing forward with a resolution to rebuke Tlaib over her criticism of Israel.

But a final decision on the measure is not expected until tomorrow after lawmakers postponed the vote.

Earlier, we reported that Tlaib rejected the resolution as an attempt to silence her.

“The cries of Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you all,” she said on the House floor.

I am the only Palestinian American serving in Congress, and my perspective is needed here now more than ever. I will not be silenced and I will not let anyone distort my words.

I’m from Detroit, where I learned to speak truth to power, even if my voice shakes. pic.twitter.com/bXhGPCcKat

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) November 7, 2023

▻https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-votes-to-censure-rep-rashida-tlaib-over-israel-comments/ar-AA1jze61

Nov. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday night to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., over comments she has made on the Israel-Hamas war.

The censure resolution, introduced by Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., was approved by a vote of 234 to 188 with all but four House Republicans and 22 Democrats voting in favor.

“For the 26th time in our nation’s history, Congress has censured a member,” McCormick wrote Tuesday night in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

A censure in the House is a form of public humiliation to rebuke a member for a specified misconduct.
“I was proud to lead a bipartisan coalition of our members to hold Rashida Tlaib accountable for her dishonest and antisemitic behavior. Thank you to all the other members who helped me refine the language of the bill, who cosponsored and spoke on the floor in support, and the 22 Democrats that had the courage to join us in voting for final passage,” McCormick added.

Who is Rashida Tlaib, why was the Palestinian-American lawmaker censured?
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 8 Nov 20238 Nov 2023 | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/8/who-is-rashida-tlaib-why-was-the-palestinian-american-lawmaker-censured

https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1732441056-1699440396.jpg

The congresswoman says she will not be silenced as Republicans and some fellow Democrats accuse her of supporting the destruction of Israel.

The US House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to censure its sole Palestinian-American lawmaker, Rashida Tlaib, for her comments on the Israel-Hamas war.

The resolution, which was backed by some 22 members of her Democratic party, claimed Tlaib had been “promoting false narratives” regarding the October 7 Hamas attack inside Israel that killed more than 1,400 people. She was also accused of seeking “destruction of Israel” – a charge she rejected. (...)

#7oct23

Tikun Olam sur X :

[…] I formally censor every Democratic member who voted to censor her. They should be ashamed. ASHAMED. They voted to censor their own member for telling the truth: Israel is committing genocide against Gaza. The American people know this. U don’t

▻https://twitter.com/richards1052/status/1722193725118697660

good job, my deer

Compiègne : un cerf réfugié dans le centre-ville après une chasse à courre
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/876956

Minneapolis council member: Conversations underway to disband police
▻https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/america-in-crisis/minneapolis-council-member-conversations-underway-to-disband-polic

https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/51b49a4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4880x2562+0+346/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fewscripps.brightspotcdn.com%2F23%2Ff5%2Fcc8044764aa9a33d7e0d742a329c%2Fap-18031768392347.jpg

"The department is ungovernable,” Fletcher said. “Chief (Medaria) Arradondo is a leader that we’ve all had very high hopes in and that I imagined could play a role in envisioning the next version of public safety. But he has clearly not been able to make the culture change happen that we were hoping for and investing in.”

What it would take to disband the department is unclear. But what is clear is that the department is already seeing a reduced role in the protection of the city.

On Wednesday, the Minneapolis Park Board voted to terminate its relationship with the department, and the Minneapolis Police will no longer be involved in guarding events on park property.

Fletcher said in a Twitter post that it’s time to “declare policing as we know it a thing of the past.”

Minneapolis City Council members look to disband the police department as schools and other city agencies cut ties with police
▻https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/minneapolis-city-council-members-look-to-disband-the-police-department-as-schools-and-other-city-agencies-cut-ties-with-police/ar-BB152szZ
▻https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB152eBW.img?h=630&w=1200&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&f=jpg

Several members of the Minneapolis City Council are exploring ways to permanently disband the Minneapolis Police Department.
Over the past week, several other city agencies have severed their ties to the department.
“We can send a city response that makes situations better. We can resolve confusion over a $US20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon, or pulling out handcuffs,” Councilmember Steve Fletcher said.

Mais pas de grosse presse sur ça...

Six Ideas for a Cop-Free World - Rolling Stone
▻https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/police-brutality-cop-free-world-protest-199465

https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/rs-177841-459956352.jpg

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on December 16th, 2014, following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, black men who were killed by police. In recent days, in the wake of nationwide protests demanding justice for George Floyd, we are sharing some of our previous coverage about how to end systematic racism in America.

After months of escalating protests and grassroots organizing in response to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, police reformers have issued many demands. The moderates in this debate typically qualify their rhetoric with “We all know we need police, but…” It’s a familiar refrain to those of us who’ve spent years in the streets and the barrios organizing around police violence, only to be confronted by officers who snarl, “But who’ll help you if you get robbed?” We can put a man on the moon, but we’re still lacking creativity down here on Earth.

But police are not a permanent fixture in society. While law enforcers have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the “disorderly conduct” of the urban poor. Like every structure we’ve known all our lives, it seems that the policing paradigm is inescapable and everlasting, and the only thing keeping us from the precipice of a dystopic Wild West scenario. It’s not.

I’m a Minneapolis City Council Member. We Must Disband the Police—Here’s What Could Come Next | Time
▻https://time.com/5848705/disband-and-replace-minneapolis-police

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/minneapolis-police-disbanding-2.jpg?quality=85&w=1200&h=628&crop=1

I have been surprised, then, by how difficult and controversial it has been to pass the relatively small budget changes that we have made, which have not even cut their budget but merely redirected some proposed increases to fund a new Office of Violence Prevention. Other programmatic proposals to change the way we police have been met with stiff institutional resistance.

Minneapolis Police had an opportunity to distance themselves from Derek Chauvin, to express sympathy, to be a calming presence. Instead, they deployed tear gas and rubber bullets, effectively escalating the situation from protest to pitched conflict. By the next day, it was clear that people on Lake Street were rallying for much more than the prosecution of four officers. They were demonstrating their anger at decades of harassment and racialized violence and calling for it to end.

We have a talented, thoughtful police chief who has attempted some important steps. He has fired officers for significant abuses only to have his decisions overturned and those officers reinstated by arbitrators. Mayor Frey has met fierce resistance from the Federation to implement even minor policy changes.

After viewing George Floyd’s murder, watching police not only fail to apologize, but escalate the situation with aggressive tactics, and finally watching the department abandon neighborhood businesses to exclusively defend their precinct building, most of my constituents have had enough.

Every member of the Minneapolis City Council has now expressed the need for dramatic structural change. I am one of many on the Council, including the Council President and the Chair of Public Safety, who are publicly supporting the call to disband our police department and start fresh with a community-oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity. What I hear from most of my constituents is that they want to make sure we provide for public safety, and they have learned their whole lives to equate “safety” with “police,” but are now concluding that need not be the case.

We had already pushed for pilot programs to dispatch county mental health professionals to mental health calls, and fire department EMTs to opioid overdose calls, without police officers. We have similarly experimented with unarmed, community-oriented street teams on weekend nights downtown to focus on de-escalation. We could similarly turn traffic enforcement over to cameras and, potentially, our parking enforcement staff, rather than our police department.

By Steve Fletcher
June 5, 2020 9:57 AM EDT
Fletcher is a City Council Member for Ward 3 in Minneapolis, Minn.

We can invest in cultural competency and mental health training, de-escalation and conflict resolution. We can send a city response that that is appropriate to each situation and makes it better. We can resolve confusion over a $20 grocery transaction without drawing a weapon or pulling out handcuffs.

Mostly—and this might be the hardest part to envision and make real—we need to be more deeply engaged with each other. We need to build the relationship networks, skills, and capacity in our communities to support each other in resolving conflicts and keeping each other safe before things escalate dangerously. Our isolation from each other has required us to outsource the management of social interactions. We have to get relational.

Opinion | The Police Killed George Floyd. Redirect Their Funding Elsewhere. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/george-floyd-police-funding.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/05/30/opinion/30McHarris/30McHarris-facebookJumbo.jpg

The only way we’re going to stop these endless cycles of police violence is by creating alternatives to policing. Because even in a pandemic where black people have been disproportionately killed by the coronavirus, the police are still murdering us.

On Monday, a worker at a store in Minneapolis called 911, claiming that George Floyd had used counterfeit money. The incident ended with a police officer suffocating Mr. Floyd to death, despite his and bystanders’ pleas for mercy. Protests have since erupted across the country while the police respond with military-style violence.

As the case of George Floyd makes clear, calling 911 for even the slightest thing can be a death sentence for black people. For many marginalized communities, 911 is not a viable option because the police often make crises worse.

More training or diversity among police officers won’t end police brutality, nor will firing and charging individual officers. Look at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The department offers procedural justice as well as trainings for implicit bias, mindfulness and de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer diversity, bans “warrior style” policing, uses body cameras, implemented an early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training around mental health crisis intervention, and practices “reconciliation” efforts in communities of color.

George Floyd was still murdered. The focus on training, diversity and technology like body cameras shifts focus away from the root cause of police violence and instead gives the police more power and resources. The problem is that the entire criminal justice system gives police officers the power and opportunity to systematically harass and kill with impunity.

The solution to ending police violence and cultivating a safer country lies in reducing the power of the police and their contact with the public.

Municipalities can begin by changing policies or statutes so police officers never respond to certain kinds of emergencies, including ones that involve substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness or mental health. Instead, health care workers or emergency response teams would handle these incidents.

Ideally, people would have the option to call a different number — say 727 — to access various trained response teams.

The good news is, this is already happening. Violence interruption programs exist throughout the country and they’re often led by people from the community who have experience navigating tricky situations. Some programs, like one in Washington, D.C., do not work with the police; its staff members rely instead on personal outreach and social connections for information about violence that they work to mediate and diffuse. We should invest in these programs, which operate on shoestring budgets, so they have their own dedicated dispatch centers outside of 911.

Dallas is pioneering a new approach where social workers are being dispatched to some 911 calls that involve mental health emergencies. The program has shown success, and many of the people receive care that they would never have gotten in jails or overcrowded hospitals.

In California, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective deals with child sexual abuse without the police. The collective develops pods — groups of people including survivors, bystanders or people who have harmed in the past — that each pod-member feels they can turn to for support when needed.

Here’s another idea: Imagine if the money used to pay the salaries of police officers who endlessly patrol public housing buildings and harass residents can be used to fund plans that residents design to keep themselves safe. The money could also pay the salaries of maintenance and custodial workers; fund community programs, employment and a universal basic income; or pay for upgrades to elevators and apartment units so residents are not stuck without gas during a pandemic, as some people in Brooklyn were.

▻https://batjc.wordpress.com

By Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris

Mr. McHarris is a doctoral candidate focusing on race, housing and policing. Ms. McHarris is a strategist with the Movement for Black Lives.

Black Lives Matter Has Been Doing The Work To ’Defund The Police’ For Years
▻https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-lives-matter-has-been-doing-the-work-to-defund-the-police-for-years/ar-BB156D9S
▻https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB156BjH.img?h=630&w=1200&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&f=jpg&x=3157&y=7

Los Angeles’ BLM chapter and its partners proposed an alternative “People’s Budget,” which showed how redirecting money allocated for LAPD could pay for desperately needed housing assistance, rent suspension, mental health services and support for public schools. The activists succeeded in embarrassing City Council members into delaying a vote on the budget and ultimately allowing a June 1 deadline to pass without revising the budget.

Despite its progressive reputation, Los Angeles has lagged behind the rest of the state in criminal justice reform. L.A. County jails incarcerate more people than any other jail system in the country.Black Lives Matter activists have been at the forefront of efforts to change that.

Although Black Lives Matter does not endorse candidates, it has led the effort to oust Lacey, who has opposed almost every criminal justice reform measure that has come up during her eight years in office. Lacey, the county’s first Black district attorney, ran for reelection in 2016 unopposed but is facing a progressive challenger in November after failing to secure more than 50% of the vote in the primary.

Thanks to BLM organizing, L.A. residents will also have the chance to vote on Measure R, a civilian-driven ballot initiative that aims to reduce the county’s jail population by getting prisoners with mental health conditions out of jail and into treatment. Organizers collected 250,000 signatures to get Measure R on the ballot.

What does ’defund the police’ mean? The rallying cry sweeping the US – explained | US news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/defunding-the-police-us-what-does-it-mean?ref=hvper.com
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8fd0ed9636b86ed15b807511f42695dda676873d/0_135_3219_1931/master/3219.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

For years, community groups have advocated for defunding law enforcement – taking money away from police and prisons – and reinvesting those funds in services. The basic principle is that government budgets and “public safety” spending should prioritize housing, employment, community health, education and other vital programs, instead of police officers. Advocates argue that defunding is the best way forward since attempts to reform police practices over the last five years have failed, as evidenced by the brutal killing of George Floyd. Groups have a range of demands, with some seeking modest reductions and others viewing full defunding as a step toward abolishing contemporary police services.
How much does America currently spend on police?

In the past four decades, the cost of policing in the US has tripled and is now $115bn, according to a recent analysis. That steady increase comes as crime has been consistently declining. In most cities, spending on police is significantly greater than spending on services and other departments ($1.8bn on police in Los Angeles, for example, which is more than half the city’s general fund). The Covid-19 economic crisis has led cities and states to make drastic budget cuts to education, youth programs, arts and culture, parks, libraries, housing services and more. But police budgets have grown or gone largely untouched – until pressure from protests this week.

Abolishing Prisons Is within Our Grasp | Bitch Media
▻https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/prison-abolition-should-be-the-american-dream

https://www.bitchmedia.org/sites/default/files/styles/facebook_ratio/public/open-graph/87_RGB_BeyondBars_P2W_social.jpg?itok=JPhuOnYA

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, with 2.2 million adults in prisons or jails at the end of 2016. Nearly 60,000 children under the age of 18 are also incarcerated in juvenile jails or prisons, and about 10,000 more children are held in adult jails or prisons. Citizens pay the high price for this system because our tax dollars are funneled into policing and incarcerating the people in these systems—predominantly Black and Brown people. This is by design. Slavery legally ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, but the language of this amendment still allowed slavery as punishment for a crime. The carceral system revived slave labor, allowing the United States to continue disenfranchising and enslaving incarcerated Black people. Now almost every aspect of Black and Brown people’s lives is affected by the carceral state—from extra surveillance and imprisonment to disenfranchisement upon release. The entire system is built to maintain white supremacy, which remains the status quo in the United States.

“It might be challenging to envision a world without policing or imprisonment because we’re constantly being told that these systems are natural [they’re not] and have always existed [they haven’t],” says Mohamed Shehk, the national media and communications director of Critical Resistance. Though some Americans have difficulties imagining a world without police or prisons, communities who don’t rely on the PIC do exist. Shehk says the Palestinian village where his mother grew up doesn’t have a police force. Problems there are resolved by “bringing in the elders of the community to come up with a resolution.” In 2011, the indigenous Purépecha town of Cherán banned political parties, gangs, and police. Since then, they boast the lowest murder rate in the entire Michoacán region, which is historically one of the most violent regions in Mexico. What’s more, since Cherán abolished the corrupt police force, they haven’t had a single kidnapping.

“Policing exists to manage the consequences of inequality in ways that benefit those people who are creating the inequality,” says Alex S. Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of the 2017 book The End of Policing. “The decision to use police to manage the problems of the poor is inherently unjust in most circumstances and actually racist because this burden so falls most heavily on communities of color.” Many wealthy white communities have already abolished police forces because they don’t want the criminal justice system solving their intercommunal problems. Why is this option not available to all of us?

Abolitionists are often asked to explain what will happen to people who commit murder or rape if police and prisons are abolished. Shehk responds with a similar question: “What are we doing now with people who commit those harms?” Some of the high-profile assault stories that surfaced during the #MeToo movement, including Chanel Miller’s rape at the hands of Brock Turner and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of her assault by Brett Kavanaugh, revealed that survivors of sexual harassment and assault aren’t being protected by this system. Instead, the criminal justice system protects and maintains agents of the patriarchy, including students like Turner, police officers, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and presidents.

Since the United States locks people up at a higher rate than any other country, you’d assume this “would be the safest place, virtually free of harm or violence,” Shehk says, but that’s obviously not the case. The president of the United States and two Supreme Court justices have been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault on multiple occasions. Less than 1 percent of rapes result in the incarceration of the perpetrator, while at least 89 percent of survivors face emotional and physical consequences. Often the rapes reported to police aren’t even investigated, considering the 200,000 rape kits the federal government estimates are sitting—submitted, yet unopened—in police storage. That’s not justice.

ActivismMagazinePoliticsprisonThe Fantasy Issue
Beyond BarsPrison Abolition Should Be the American Dream
by Reina Sultan |

artwork by Matice Moore and Dawud Lee
Published on June 4, 2020

I do not have all the answers, left. I try to have conversations about every subject we must deal with in our communities, center. Someone you love needs your support, but you cannot be there, no matter how much they need you, right. (Artwork by Matice Moore and Dawud Lee for the LifeLines Project)
This article was published in Fantasy Issue #87 | Summer 2020 Subscribe »

In her 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis wrote, “Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish.” Those who oppose prison-industrial complex (PIC) abolition partially see it as a fantasy that can’t be realized. “This is a measure of how difficult it is to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities and families. The prison is considered so ‘natural’ that it is extremely hard to imagine life without it,” Davis writes.

But activists and organizations have been imagining life without prisons for decades. The Prison Research/Education/Action Project’s 1976 pamphlet “Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists” laid out the pillars of abolition: “moratorium,” “decarceration,” and “excarceration.” “Moratorium” calls for an end to the building of prisons, jails, and detention centers; “decarceration” works to have nonviolent offenders released from prison; and “excarceration” involves diverting people away from interacting with law enforcement through decriminalization. In 1997, Davis and City University of New York professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore cofounded Critical Resistance, an international organization that aims to dismantle the pic by using these three pillars. A year later, 3,500 people convened for a three-day Critical Resistance conference to discuss the limitations of the PIC in the United States.

Other organizations with similar goals have also been erected: Decrim NY wants to decriminalize sex work in New York City and in the state and decarcerate sex workers. The Black Youth Project 100 uses a Black, queer, and feminist lens to work toward the liberation of all Black people, including those who are currently incarcerated. No New Jails NYC calls for an end to the building and funding of new prisons and jails in New York City. All of these organizations are working toward a common goal: ending the pic.
Justice Is Not Served

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, with 2.2 million adults in prisons or jails at the end of 2016. Nearly 60,000 children under the age of 18 are also incarcerated in juvenile jails or prisons, and about 10,000 more children are held in adult jails or prisons. Citizens pay the high price for this system because our tax dollars are funneled into policing and incarcerating the people in these systems—predominantly Black and Brown people. This is by design. Slavery legally ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, but the language of this amendment still allowed slavery as punishment for a crime. The carceral system revived slave labor, allowing the United States to continue disenfranchising and enslaving incarcerated Black people. Now almost every aspect of Black and Brown people’s lives is affected by the carceral state—from extra surveillance and imprisonment to disenfranchisement upon release. The entire system is built to maintain white supremacy, which remains the status quo in the United States.

“It might be challenging to envision a world without policing or imprisonment because we’re constantly being told that these systems are natural [they’re not] and have always existed [they haven’t],” says Mohamed Shehk, the national media and communications director of Critical Resistance. Though some Americans have difficulties imagining a world without police or prisons, communities who don’t rely on the PIC do exist. Shehk says the Palestinian village where his mother grew up doesn’t have a police force. Problems there are resolved by “bringing in the elders of the community to come up with a resolution.” In 2011, the indigenous Purépecha town of Cherán banned political parties, gangs, and police. Since then, they boast the lowest murder rate in the entire Michoacán region, which is historically one of the most violent regions in Mexico. What’s more, since Cherán abolished the corrupt police force, they haven’t had a single kidnapping.
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Some communities within the United States are also accustomed to policing themselves. Shehk says it’s “important to remember that many communities don’t call the cops because of rightful mistrust.” He also points out that “you can also visit Beverly Hills or the Golden Triangle or the other elite, wealthy, white neighborhoods of this country to see what a community without police or prisons looks like.” When a student at an elite private school in Orange County, California, is found with weed in their backpack, teachers don’t call the police—and there isn’t an active police presence within the school itself. Instead, teachers call the student’s parents, believing it’s an issue that can be solved within the family. Black and Brown students, on the other hand, are funneled from school into the criminal justice system in what is commonly known as the school-to-prison pipeline. These students are increasingly accused of crimes, suspended, or reported to the police compared to their white counterparts, which often creates a lasting connection with the carceral state.

Reducing interaction with law enforcement would allow students the space to make mistakes and learn from them, and would encourage teachers to build better relationships with parents. It also moves resources away from metal detectors, surveillance equipment, and onsite police and toward quality educators, better school supplies, and extracurricular activities. “Policing exists to manage the consequences of inequality in ways that benefit those people who are creating the inequality,” says Alex S. Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of the 2017 book The End of Policing. “The decision to use police to manage the problems of the poor is inherently unjust in most circumstances and actually racist because this burden so falls most heavily on communities of color.” Many wealthy white communities have already abolished police forces because they don’t want the criminal justice system solving their intercommunal problems. Why is this option not available to all of us?
What Does Abolition Look Like?

Abolitionists are often asked to explain what will happen to people who commit murder or rape if police and prisons are abolished. Shehk responds with a similar question: “What are we doing now with people who commit those harms?” Some of the high-profile assault stories that surfaced during the #MeToo movement, including Chanel Miller’s rape at the hands of Brock Turner and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of her assault by Brett Kavanaugh, revealed that survivors of sexual harassment and assault aren’t being protected by this system. Instead, the criminal justice system protects and maintains agents of the patriarchy, including students like Turner, police officers, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and presidents.

Since the United States locks people up at a higher rate than any other country, you’d assume this “would be the safest place, virtually free of harm or violence,” Shehk says, but that’s obviously not the case. The president of the United States and two Supreme Court justices have been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault on multiple occasions. Less than 1 percent of rapes result in the incarceration of the perpetrator, while at least 89 percent of survivors face emotional and physical consequences. Often the rapes reported to police aren’t even investigated, considering the 200,000 rape kits the federal government estimates are sitting—submitted, yet unopened—in police storage. That’s not justice.

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Murder clearance rates aren’t much better, with police reportedly solving only about 60 percent of murders. When the victim is Black—as the majority of homicide victims are—the clearance rate declines to the lowest of any other racial group. In communities that are particularly disenfranchised, those rates can be in the single digits. These figures don’t instill much faith in law enforcement’s efficacy.

As Vitale puts it, “serial killers don’t just fall out of the sky.” According to him, treating criminalization as the only option for deterrence is one of the reasons nothing is done to help children or teenagers who, despite the threat of prison, still exhibit violent tendencies. That violence might be prevented through robust social services, mental healthcare, and support systems. Shehk also lists “restorative and transformative justice practices, healing circles, or community accountability models” as examples of nonpunitive ways of addressing harm. “Rather than trying to cage away the problem, one key part of these models is an attempt to address the root cause of the harm and to change the conditions in which it occurred so that it doesn’t happen again,” he says. “Many of these are informed by Indigenous practices, and all of them seek to uplift the humanity of the parties involved.”

Mass incarceration costs $182 billion a year, when considering policing, court costs, and the operating costs of prisons and jails—and it doesn’t even effectively deter crime, achieve justice for victims, or rehabilitate perpetrators. Rather than funneling money into the PIC, the United States could fund an education system that invests in mental-health services instead of policing and surveillance. We could use those billions of dollars to finance living accommodations for houseless people and provide them with mental healthcare and drug rehabilitation as needed. This money could be used to train crisis intervention teams or violence interrupters to deal with escalated situations.

The possibilities are endless, if we allow ourselves to dream bigger than criminalization and bondage. “Being an abolitionist is the most realistic position because it is based in statistics and logic along with empathy and respect for human dignity,” says Agbebiyi. To Daoud, “over-policing creates a system of engineered conflict and perpetuates harm. As such, she—and others at BBO—believes that abolishing prisons must be coupled with radically caring for your community in many forms, including cop-watching and bystander intervention. The dream of abolition is being realized every day by people working for a more equitable world. “If you’re doing work to advocate for a living wage, that’s abolitionist work. If you’re doing work to advocate against environmental racism, that’s abolitionist work. If you’re working to make sure folks have access to affordable healthcare, that’s abolitionist work,” Agbebiyi says. Moving abolition from a fantasy to a reality is going to happen incrementally, but we can certainly make it happen. Vitale confirms this, saying, “Abolition is embedded in tons of movements all over the country and it’s happening right now.”

by Reina Sultan
#abolitionnisme_carcéral #prison

En français :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/859155

Majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledges to dismantle the Police Department.
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/859237

Nine members — a veto-proof majority — of the Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to dismantle the city’s Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.

Saying that the city’s current policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people gathered late in the day on a grassy hill, and signed a pledge to begin the process of taking apart the Police Department as it now exists.

Mpls. Council majority backs dismantling police department - StarTribune.com
▻https://www.startribune.com/mpls-council-majority-backs-dismantling-police-department/571088302

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In their boldest statement since George Floyd’s killing, nine Minneapolis City Council members told a crowd Sunday that they will “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.”

“We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said, reading off a prepared statement. “We’re committed to engaging with every willing community member in the City of Minneapolis over the next year to identify what safety looks like for you.”

Their words — delivered one day after Mayor Jacob Frey told a crowd of protesters he does not support the full abolishment of the MPD — set off what is likely to be a long, complicated debate about the future of the state’s largest police force.

With the world watching, and the city’s leaders up for re-election next year, the stakes are particularly high. While Minneapolis has debated the issue in the past, Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police has added a sense of urgency, and the calls for police departments to be disbanded have echoed in other cities around the country.

Council members have noted repeatedly since Floyd’s death that Minneapolis has the chance to redefine policing. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, nine of them walked onto a stage at Powderhorn Park to support members of advocacy group Black Visions, who were calling for the end of the MPD. On stage were Council President Lisa Bender, Vice President Andrea Jenkins and Council Members Alondra Cano, Phillippe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison, Steve Fletcher, Cam Gordon, Andrew Johnson and Jeremy Schroeder.

“Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed and will never be accountable for its actions,” they said. “We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new, transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis.”

#démantèlement de la #police_municipale

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The End of Policing: Alex Vitale on How Cops & Their Unions Cover Up Inequality, Exploitation | Democracy Now!
▻https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/8/alex_vitale_end_of_policing#transcript

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Professor Alex Vitale argues the answer to police violence is not “reform.” It’s defunding. The author of “The End of Policing” says the movement to defund the police is part of “a long story about the use of police and prisons to manage problems of inequality and exploitation.” He asks, “Why are we using police to paper over problems of economic exploitation?” He also discusses the role of police unions. “They become, in many cities, the locus, the institutional hub, for a whole set of right-wing ’thin blue line’ politics that believe that policing is not only effective but it’s the most desirable way to solve our problems. And embedded in this is a deep racism that says that certain populations can only be managed through constant threats of coercion.”

Minneapolis City Council Vows to Dismantle Police Dept. After Mass Protests & Grassroots Organizing | Democracy Now!
▻https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/8/minneapolis_police_abolition#transcript

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The City Council of Minneapolis announced Saturday it would disband and abolish the police department responsible for the killing of African American man George Floyd, following nearly two weeks of mass protest and growing calls to defund the police.

In a statement, nine of the city’s 12 councilmembers said, quote, “Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed, and will never be accountable for its action. … We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said.

The historic announcement comes after years of organizing on the ground by groups like Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Collective and MPD150.

Migrants : l’Italie s’en prend à l’Autriche, l’UE propose un plan

Le gouvernement italien a convoqué l’ambassadeur d’Autriche après la menace de ce pays d’envoyer l’armée contrôler la frontière avec l’Italie, soumise à une pression migratoire qui a poussé l’Union européenne à annoncer un nouveau plan d’action.

▻http://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/migrants-litalie-sen-prend-lautriche-lue-propose-un-plan.afp.
#fermeture_des_frontières

Austrian military set to stop Italy migrants

Seven hundred and fifty soldiers, including Pandur armoured vehicles, stand ready to go to the Austrian-Italian border at 72 hours notice, Austria’s defence minister, Hanspeter Doskozil, told the Kronen Zeitung newspaper, an Austrian daily, on Monday (3 July).

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Brennero: arrivano i panzer austriaci

Quattro mezzi corazzati Pandur dell’esercito sono già al confine, mentre sono in arrivo 750 militari volti ad arginare l’afflusso di profughi dall’Italia.

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►https://www.salto.bz/it/article/04072017/brennero-arrivano-i-panzer-austriaci

Italien zu Grenzkontrol­len: Österreich schadet Europa

Die Vorbereitungen für Grenzkontrollen am Brenner sorgen für Aufregung. Italien fordert Sanktionen gegen Österreich. Kurz kalmiert: Vorbereitung ist „verantwortungsvoll“.

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Italie. Pour bloquer les migrants, l’Autriche déploie ses chars à la frontière

L’Europe a franchi ce 4 juillet le cap symbolique des 100 000 migrants arrivés par la mer depuis le début de l’année. Pour 85 % d’entre eux, ils ont emprunté “la route de Méditerranée centrale” et ont posé le pied en Italie, qui, dépassée, appelle ses voisins européens à l’aide.

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▻http://www.courrierinternational.com/une/italie-pour-bloquer-les-migrants-lautriche-deploie-ses-chars-

Attention : Libero, un journal d’extrême droite... très proche de la Ligue du Nord (peut-être même fondé par elle)

Migranti, l’Austria all’Italia: “Interrompete il trasferimento da Lampedusa alla terraferma”

Il ministro degli esteri austriaco Kurz torna a minacciare la chiusura del Brennero se l’Italia «dovesse continuare con i tempestivi trasferimenti» di persone che poi «proseguono verso nord». Il sindaco di Lampedusa: «Parole da naziskin»

▻http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/07/20/migranti-laustria-allitalia-interrompete-il-trasferimento-da-lampedusa-alla-terraferma/3743210

Fallisce la esternalizzazione delle frontiere, occorre favorire canali di ingresso legale.

Ha destato scalpore la recente affermazione di un ministro austriaco che minaccia l’Italia con la chiusura del varco di frontiera del Brennero se il nostro paese continuerà a trasferire migranti da Lampedusa verso altre parti del territorio italiano, favorendo in questo modo, a suo avviso, il successivo passaggio verso altri paesi europei. Questa la versione finale di un atteggiamento minaccioso maturato in tutta Europa, dopo che era circolata l’ipotesi della concessione di visti umanitari da parte dell’Italia a tutti i migranti provenienti dalla Libia. Una ipotesi sulla quale invece occorre insistere. Senza cercare agganci impossibili con la Direttiva 2001/55/CE, ma applicando semplicemente il nostro diritto interno, e dunque gli articoli 5 comma 6 e 20 del Testo Unico 286/98 sull’immigrazione, che prevedono i visti per motivi umanitari o per protezione temporanea.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/07/21/fallisce-la-esternalizzazione-delle-frontiere-occorre-favorire-canali-di-ingr

Migrants : l’Italie hausse le ton face à ses voisins

L’Italie hausse le ton face à plusieurs de ses voisins de l’Est qui lui réclament de stopper l’arrivée de migrants sur son sol, Rome faisant de plus en plus pression sur l’Europe pour qu’elle prenne une juste part dans la gestion de la crise migratoire.

▻http://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/migrants-litalie-hausse-le-ton-face-ses-voisins.afp.com.20170