Leaving the Cops Behind in 2015: youngist.org/leaving-cops-behind-in-2015/ We write to you as dispossessed queer youth and youth of color from Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Oakland. Over the past several months we have taken part in a national uprising against police violence and the killing of Black people in the streets of the United States. There are some for whom this is, indeed, an uprising against the police and the State. Regardless of which camp you fall into, on this New Year’s Day, we want to speak to this generation and all those facing systemic violence at the hands of the State. We struggle with you and are building with you to leave the cops behind as we move into 2015. The Movement Moment Since the trial and verdict claiming George Zimmerman ‘not guilty’ in 2013, the tensions in the U.S. around racist policing continue to swell as we recall more stolen Black lives, from Islan Nettles, to Mike Brown, to Eric Garner, to Darrien Hunt, and 7-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was murdered in her sleep by a police officer in her Detroit home during a police raid. Trans women of color — especially Black trans women — are systematically targeted by the police, their existence criminalized as health, employment and educational institutions are foreclosed to them. We evoke the names of 21-year-old Deshawnda Sanchez who was murdered in Los Angeles, Tiffany Edwards of Ohio who was found shot to death, and Zoraida Reyes of Orange Co. who was found dead in a dumpster behind a Dairy Queen. As this burgeoning movement against police violence pushes forward a new orientation of Black political struggle, we might be witnessing the melding of old Black nationalist calls of a ‘love Black/live Black/buy Black’ and an affirmation that all Black lives along the gender spectrum matter, including ‘Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black undocumented folks, folks with records, women.’ Moreover, this articulation of the movement is coming directly from queer Black women. Origins of Policing To understand the nature of an institution, it is useful to understand its history. Police in early colonial America began as forces to protect white settlers from Native peoples, and in many southern areas, police began as slave patrols claiming that freed Black people were the most dangerous threat to white life. As resistance and uprisings amongst enslaved peoples swelled, slave patrols were formed to capture, punish, and return runaway slaves. Of course, slave patrols did not limit themselves to capturing and brutalizing slaves — they captured Native peoples as well by enforcing early identification laws. Thus, from their earliest iteration, police in America were designed to oppress and criminalize non-white populations. In the 1800s, local politicians would hire police to keep themselves them in power, as the police would supposedly “encourage” citizens to vote for the politician they were hired by — just as politicians use police today to maintain a hierarchy of power and to ensure the status quo remains in tact.... FULL ARTICLE: youngist.org/leaving-cops-behind-in-2015/
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 03:40:00 +0000
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