Graffiti on a sidewalk says "abolish the police"

On Police Abolition: Decolonization Is The Only Way

If Black masses are semi-colonized, the solution is decolonization. If slavery was merely reformed, slavery must be abolished in all its iterations. The U.S. police are the representation and manifestation of modern-day slave patrols. For these reasons and others, the police must be abolished in their entirety and other carceral institutions as well. . . .

Community Control of Police v Defunding Police: Addressing the Patriarchal Roots of Policing

Community Control for who? We still have too many hierarchies and contradictions within the Black community to ensure a subset of people with police power would not replicate the same violent institution power. The problem with policing is not who controls it or who can enforce its protocols. The problem with policing is that policing is inherently violent and always patriarchal. Campaigns like #sayhername (though co-opted/erased/reduced to now include #sayhisname) was a recognition that non-cishet men experience police violence. The violence may not be out in the open or in the streets, recording on a cell phone, or public in . . .

The Argument Against Community Control of the Police

In light of the recent Black rebellions that have shaken the nation into the summer months, two key positions on policing abolition have reemerged. Defund the police, which had enjoyed some surprisingly mainstream attention, is essentially the position that minimizing police department budgets is the first step towards the dismantling of police systems. And then there is community control of the police, a less mainstream, but still widely popular position among Black activists, that makes the case that police departments have to be controlled by the community before they can be dismantled. While proponents of community control don’t understand their . . .

Black-Outs, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and Black Power

It should be very clear by now that the state moved swiftly to domesticate the resistance by attempting to keep it at a surface level appeal for “racial justice” equipped with symbolic measures, opportunist entertainers and political figures, and NO power. . . .