O levantamento nacional contra a brutalidade policial cambiou completamente a conversación sobre a policía e a seguridade. A demanda de desfinanciar a policía que se consideraría impensable na corrente principal non hai moito tempo, pero que agora está a ser tomada como política oficial en vilas e cidades de todo o país. Neste momento, é fundamental ampliar a conversa para incluír a idea do control comunitario sobre a policía.
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: Comecemos por pedirlle que describa o papel da policía como forza colonial.
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.
O que estamos dicindo é que os negros son unha colonia interna, non necesariamente un país ou estado nacional diferente. O que define ao colonialismo é unha dinámica de poder, e no que se refire aos negros hai tres características.
- 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.
Do mesmo xeito, decatámonos de que para acabar co control colonial da policía, temos que loitar polo control comunitario, que en definitiva consiste en acabar coa dominación colonial á que se enfrontan os negros.
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.
Centrándose nos asasinatos policiais, as persoas negras que fan calquera cousa son asasinadas. Aiyana Jones e Breonna Taylor estaban durmidas cando foron asasinadas. Matámonos cando durmimos. Non podemos ir buscar bolos da tenda como Trayvon Martin. Non podemos ser como Sandra Bland e preguntarlle ao policía para que me estás tirando, mentres que os brancos incluso poden loitar contra a policía. Ser asasinado pola policía non se trata dos detalles ou feitos dun incidente individual, senón do sistema policial. Cousas como a formación anti-sesgo son completamente inadecuadas. O aspecto do sistema é tan crucial.
En termos de actitudes, probablemente sexa certo que a moitos negros non lles gustan os brancos. Coñezo xente negra que non quere tratar coa xente branca. O que é diferente é que non teñen poder sistémico para promulgar ningún dano. Non podemos nomear ningún período histórico onde os negros como clase puidesen negarlle aos brancos o dereito a casarse, a educarse, a usar a escravitude, a violencia extrema e a explotación. Podemos nomear persoas negras individuais que resistiron, pero o mesmo poder estrutural non estivo alí.
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.
En termos de vínculos, o capitalismo e o racismo son inextricables. É imposible resolver un sen ter en conta o outro. Toma o concepto de policía. Quizais sexamos capaces de tratar cunha institución policial específica e transformala ou convertela dentro do capitalismo, pero non poderemos vencer á policía como entidade a non ser que derrotemos ao capitalismo porque os capitalistas atoparán un xeito de defender a súa propiedade.
Do mesmo xeito, a loita de clases non pode ter éxito sen unha derrota da policía, que é unha forza que facilita o capitalismo. A loita de clases non pode ter éxito sen enfrontarse directamente á capacidade de dominación dos capitalistas. Ninguén opta por ser explotado, en cambio é un sistema obrigado a nós, e cando vas contra o sistema imponsenos a violencia.
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.
A violencia policial é capitalismo racial, pero tamén é patriarcal. É o capitalismo racial de xénero. Tamén mantivo o dominio sobre os corpos das mulleres, sobre os corpos queer, trans e intersexuais. Tamén está obrigando a mulleres, persoas queer, trans e intersexuais a realizar labores reprodutivas.
Q: We have various proposals out there to fight police brutality as part of the uprising. We have
8 non podo agardar, then there is 8 to abolition, and then Defund and Community Control. Can you lay
eles fóra?
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.
O control comunitario aborda a cuestión policial non tanto desde o aspecto do diñeiro senón que se pregunta directamente quen ten o poder político para determinar os aparellos de seguridade dentro das nosas comunidades. O control comunitario dille ao estado: entregue o teu poder á comunidade, para que poidamos determinar como manter a nosa comunidade segura. O control comunitario é un acoplamento necesario a Defund. Non podemos estar loitando por tomar diñeiro sen loitar polo poder, porque entón será privatizado e entón atoparémonos nunha loita por recuperalo do privado ao público só para volver a onde estamos hoxe.
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: Sacaches debuxos aleatorios. Fala desta idea de "sortición" e como na túa proposta se usa para constituír a xunta de control comunitario (que supervisará a policía).
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.
Fomos con debuxos aleatorios de persoas que viven nesas zonas. Poderías espertar unha mañá e poder escoller o teu nome. Non é un posto permanente. Vostede serve por uns anos. O feito de que a próxima semana poida ser outra persoa quen forme parte da directiva cambia a dinámica da comunidade. O consello constituído anteriormente determinaría as prácticas e políticas dos equipos de seguridade.
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 é un activista afincado en Seattle. Os seus compromisos recentes foron coa campaña de Tax Amazon en Seattle e a loita contra o réxime autoritario de Modi na India, concretamente a Lei de modificación da cidadanía e o Rexistro Nacional de Cidadáns, recentemente aprobadas.
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