Die landwye opstand teen polisiebrutaliteit het die gesprek rondom polisiëring en veiligheid heeltemal verander. Die eis om polisie te defundeer wat nie lank gelede as ondenkbaar in die hoofstroom beskou sou word nie, maar nou as amptelike beleid in dorpe en stede regoor die land opgeneem word. Op hierdie oomblik is dit van kardinale belang om die gesprek uit te brei om die idee van gemeenskapsbeheer oor polisiëring in te sluit.
In order to do so, I caught up with activist M Adams, who describes community control as “essential coupling” to the demand to defund the police. Although we did touch upon some of the details of how community control would work, the goal of the interview was more to illustrate the importance of the idea. M. Adams is a community organizer and co-executive director of F reedom Inc. and a leader in the M ovement for Black Lives. As a queer Black person, Adams has developed and advocated for a strong intersectional approach in numerous important venues. Adams is a leading figure in the Take Back the Land Movement, she presented before the United Nations for the Convention on Eliminating Racial Discrimination, she is a co-author of Forward from Ferguson and a p aper on Black community control over the police, and she is the author of intersectionality theory in Why Killing Unarmed Black folks is a Queer issue.
Q: Kom ons begin deur jou te vra om die rol van die polisie as 'n koloniale mag te beskryf.
MA: We think it’s extremely important to be scientific in our assessment about what’s causing police brutality. In our assessment, it is because the Black community exists and functions as a colony within the United States. When you use the word “colony”, most people think about one group of people colonizing another group of people in a far away place, and that is indeed one way of setting up a colony.
Wat ons sê is dat Swart mense 'n interne kolonie is, nie noodwendig 'n ander land of nasiestaat nie. Wat kolonialisme definieer, is 'n magsdinamiek, en soos dit met swart mense verband hou, is daar drie kenmerke.
- There is extraction of wealth and labor, and we can document this from the chattel slavery system to the current day mass incarceration. We can see the under-employment of Black folks, the precariousness, the displacement. Black people are a hyper-exploited class in the way wealth is extracted from us, our bodies are labor.
- The colony acts as a dumping site for runoff goods; not only do they use our labor to produce or create wealth, but then they also consume the things they think are good and dump the bad ones back on us. We’ve seen that in the recession of 2008, where banks’ exploitative practices like redlining and predatory lending – gendered racial capitalism – put us in a precarious situation where we don’t control anything, land is commodified altogether, and Black
people as a class don’t have the ability to house ourselves. Then the banks get the bailouts, get all the money and then they can charge us again, exploiting us another layer.
- In the context of the US, the colonial relationship tends to placate poor white people. Racial capitalism in the US has been a benefactor for poor white folk, as a way to keep poor white folk from turning on capitalists. For instance, the project of neoliberalism was not only a set of policies for capital to gain more power, but was accompanied by punitive policies, by discourses of Black criminality, anti Black and anti woman, anti queer, trans, intersex personal responsibility narratives, of Black people being responsible for the situation we were in. We see it in the current presidency. Trump is able to continuously have white people bought into the project of whiteness whether or not capitalism is actually serving the interests of poor white folk.
If we can demonstrate that Black people are in a colonial relationship with the US government – Black people as a class, not individuals where individuals like Oprah Winfrey are rich – then we understand what the role of policing inside of that is. It is to be an occupying force that maintains the status of capitalism. Hence, Black people are being murdered by the police because we are under occupation. If we want to end the murders, then we must end the occupation. We see this when our military occupies other countries; we know that those occupations only end if we withdraw the military. It won’t end if the military are nice, or militant forces that speak the language, or play basketball, or give somebody a ride-along in a tank. That all sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Because we understand that military force is an occupying force.
Net so besef ons dat om die koloniale beheer van die polisie te beëindig, ons moet veg vir gemeenskapsbeheer, wat uiteindelik gaan oor die beëindiging van die koloniale oorheersing wat Swart mense in die gesig staar.
Q: There is a famous quote by Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael): “If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you’re anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.” Talk about the systemic aspect of racism and its connection with capitalism.
MA: That quote that you offered is so important. It is illogical to think that we can solve the issues of Black oppression by trying to change the individual mindset of white people. We need to be thinking systemically. Racism at its core is a system of power.
Fokus op polisiemoorde, Swart mense wat enigiets doen, word vermoor. Aiyana Jones en Breonna Taylor het geslaap toe hulle vermoor is. Ons word doodgemaak as ons slaap. Ons kan nie soos Trayvon Martin kegels by die winkel gaan haal nie. Ons kan nie soos Sandra Bland wees en die polisiebeampte vra waarvoor trek jy my af nie, terwyl wit mense selfs teen die polisie kan baklei. Om deur die polisie vermoor te word gaan nie oor die besonderhede of feite van 'n individuele voorval nie, maar oor die stelsel van polisiëring. Dinge soos anti-vooroordeel opleiding is heeltemal onvoldoende. Die sisteem aspek is so deurslaggewend.
Wat houdings betref, is dit waarskynlik waar dat baie Swart mense nie van wit mense hou nie. Ek ken Swart mense wat nie met wit mense wil omgaan nie. Wat anders is, is dat hulle geen sistemiese mag het om enige skade te bewerkstellig nie. Ons kan geen geskiedkundige tydperk noem waar Swart mense as 'n klas wit mense die reg kon ontsê om hulself te huisves, om hulself op te voed, om slawerny, uiterste geweld en uitbuiting te gebruik nie. Ons kan individuele Swart mense noem wat weerstand gebied het, maar dieselfde strukturele krag was nie daar nie.
Secondly, focusing on individual attitudes makes little strategic sense. For one, how do you measure that somebody gets it enough that inside of their socio-political standing, they will be pro-Black. Is 100s of hours of counseling enough or 1000s? I’m not saying that because I don’t think people should love Black people. I am Black, and I think everyone should love Black people. But measuring that and depending on that for the path forward is lacking a strong analysis of how we got here. The other consequence of taking the above path is that the organizing among the Black community needs to stop, and instead we should be focusing on organizing the white people to like and love us. That does not put us in a position of power and is instead asking us to pander.
Wat verbande betref, is kapitalisme en rassisme onlosmaaklik. Dit is onmoontlik om die een op te los sonder om die ander af te reken. Neem die konsep van polisiëring. Ons kan dalk met 'n spesifieke polisiëringsinstelling omgaan en dit binne kapitalisme transformeer of omskep, maar ons sal nie polisiëring as 'n entiteit kan verslaan tensy ons kapitalisme verslaan nie, want kapitaliste sal 'n manier vind om hul eiendom te verdedig.
Net so kan klassestryd nie slaag sonder 'n nederlaag van polisiëring nie, wat 'n krag is wat kapitalisme fasiliteer. Klassestryd kan nie slaag sonder om kapitaliste se vermoë om te domineer direk te konfronteer nie. Niemand kies om uitgebuit te word nie, in plaas daarvan is dit 'n stelsel wat op ons afgedwing word, en wanneer jy teen die stelsel gaan, word daar geweld op ons afgedwing.
Other forms of oppression are intimately connected too. Lot of people don’t know that I answer the question of policing not only as a Black person, but also as a survivor of violence, and spend lot of my time thinking about how we end patriarchal violence, how do we end rape, stop sexual assault, intimate partner violence, etc. Our movement, i.e. of people who are feminist, who work at the intersection of gender based violence, or poor, trans, intersex people, is often used as the reason why we can’t abolish or get rid of policing. People often say what are you going to do for the rapist, for molestation of children, for the person who is abusing their partner. These are all very important questions that I deal with every day. Survivors of violence don’t have power over the system. Police are not accountable to survivors. Police violence is not just beating people up, but also sexual violence through strip searches and also the domestic violence they do in their homes and families. It is reported that the institution of policing has a higher rate of DV than civilian society. Policing violence is the choking of people like Eric Garner, but it is also the violence they commit at home. Having a feminist analysis of policing helps us to do multiple things. First, it helps us hold or better uncover all the victims of police violence who don’t get spoken about. There is a large number of survivors who call the police and then are assaulted by police officers, which is why many of the sex workers don’t even call the police. Not only does it help us better center all these victims of police violence, but it also helps us to understand the whole swathe of what the violence is.
Polisiëring van geweld is rassekapitalisme, maar dit is ook patriargaal. Dit is geslagtelike rassekapitalisme. Dit het ook die oorheersing oor vroue se liggame, oor queer, trans, interseks-liggame behou. Dit dwing ook vroue, vreemdelinge, trans- en interseksuele mense om voortplantingsarbeid uit te voer.
Q: We have various proposals out there to fight police brutality as part of the uprising. We have
8 kan nie wag nie, then there is 8 to abolition, and then Defund and Community Control. Can you lay
hulle uit?
MA: I won’t spend time on 8 can’t wait, because it’s not serious. It’s probably proposed by people who are well meaning, but we don’t need to dwell on it.
8 to abolition is abolitionist in its pivot, not seeking to save the police or make them nicer, it is calling us to address harm and accountability without prisons or police. It also seeks to decriminalize a whole set of things that are criminalized today: skipping schools can be a criminal act, teachers report students for disorderly conduct for minor disobedience, which gets them a police citation, a whole array of age-appropriate behaviors by teenagers – such as smoking weed –are criminalized. It’s a smart intervention and an important intervention.
There are two other distinct sets of ideas right now. One is Defund. The Movement For Black
L ives has been pushing Defund. Defund is also abolitionist in nature. It recognizes that the crisis of policing has become big because of heavy investment. Police funding wasn’t organic; it was intentionally developed and heavily resourced, not only with money but with culture. Defund as a strategy seeks to take those resources back. We are still amidst a pandemic; many people are unemployed. In this moment, Defund is saying instead of austerity, take the money from police. Here’s a 100 billion dollars; just take it. Instead fund things like education, housing, health care, preventative measures around domestic violence, on-the-ground community responses to violence, and so on. I think it’s an important effort that demonstrates how grossly over-funded policing is. It’s also helping ask what we want to invest in that creates safety.
Gemeenskapsbeheer benader die polisiëringsvraag nie soseer vanuit die geldaspek nie, maar een wat direk vra wie die politieke mag het om veiligheidsapparate binne ons gemeenskappe te bepaal. Gemeenskapsbeheer sê vir die staat: gee jou mag oor aan die gemeenskap, sodat ons kan bepaal hoe om ons gemeenskap veilig te hou. Gemeenskapsbeheer is 'n noodsaaklike koppeling met Defund. Ons kan nie veg om net geld te vat sonder om mag te stoei nie, want dan sal dit geprivatiseer word en dan sal ons onsself in 'n stryd bevind om dit terug te neem van privaat na die publiek net om terug te kom na waar ons vandag is.
What we have been naming as community control has to do with Black people in particular being able to determine policies, practice, procedures, as well as hiring and firing of police. And that would happen by creating hyper-democratic structures inside of communities, where actual
community members, not elected, randomly chosen as a way to avoid money in politics will have power over determining what safety looks like in those localities.
Q: Jy het ewekansige tekeninge na vore gebring. Praat oor hierdie idee van "sortering" en hoe dit in jou voorstel gebruik word om die gemeenskapsbeheerraad saam te stel (wat toesig sal hou oor polisiëring).
MA: We envision communities to be defined hyper-locally. Suppose we decide to district up our boards to be areas of 5000 people at a time (maybe that’s too big, I don’t know; details like that will need to be worked out in the future). We want to ensure that regular people living there can be inside of these boards and take power. Elections can be easily bought off; people can be bribed. Furthermore, they are typically fought by career politicians. So, we rejected elections.
Ons het met lukrake tekeninge gegaan van mense wat in daardie gebiede woon. Jy kon een oggend wakker word en jou naam kon gekies word. Dit is nie 'n permanente pos nie. Jy dien vir 'n paar jaar. Die feit dat volgende week iemand anders die een kan wees wat deel van die direksie is, verander die dinamika van die gemeenskap. Die direksie soos hierbo saamgestel sal die praktyke en beleide van die veiligheidspanne bepaal.
Some say that the above sounds like I’m not against policing. I do think the current iteration of policing has to go. But I also know that as a leftist, as a survivor of violence, as a queer person, as a female-assigned person, as a Black person, that many things that I value and affirm are not popular. I am serious when I say sexual violence has to end. But if put to a vote, we might not win it. We still need some form of organized force to deal with those issues, with white nationalists who are mad. You need some form of organized force to deal with harm. But under community control, it would be radically different.
Raghav Kaushik is 'n aktivis gebaseer in Seattle. Sy onlangse verbintenisse was met die Tax Amazon-veldtog in Seattle, en die stryd teen die outoritêre Modi-regime in Indië, spesifiek die onlangs aangeneemde wysigingswet op burgerskap en die nasionale register van burgers.
ZNetwork word uitsluitlik befonds deur die vrygewigheid van sy lesers.
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