Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenSusan Rice calls Trump administration 'racist to its core,' says Senate backers belong in 'trash heap of history' Trump mocks Biden event that practiced social distancing Trump to visit Arizona, Wisconsin next week MORE (D) called the rooting out of systemic racism in the U.S. "the moral obligation of our time," in a statement commemorating Juneteenth on Friday.

"Juneteenthreminds us of how vulnerable our nation is to being poisoned by systems and acts of inhumanitybut it's also a reminder of our ability to change," Biden tweeted. "Together, we can lay the roots of real and lasting justice, and become the extraordinary nation that was promised to all."

Biden also marked the day, which honors the ending of slavery in the U.S., by penning an op-ed on Essence.com.

"Juneteenth is a day of profound weight and powera holiday whose very existence tells us so much about the soul of America," Biden wrote. "It reminds us of just how vulnerable our nation is to being poisoned by systems and acts of inhumanity."

The former vice president referenced the killings of unarmed black Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Their deaths call us to come face to face not only with overt acts of violence, but with subtler realities that strike at the dignity of Black Americans every day, Biden wrote.

Juneteenth is recognized by all but four states. It commemoratesthe day in 1865 when Union Gen. Gordon Granger announced in Galveston, Texas, that all slaves in the state were free. Texas was the last state to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation, signed after the Civil War.

Politicians across the country, including President TrumpDonald John TrumpProtesters tear down, burn statue of Confederate general in DC US attorney in NYC who spearheaded probes of Trump allies refuses to leave as DOJ pushes ouster Trump to host 4th of July event despite pleas from lawmakers to cancel MORE, marked the holiday on Friday.

Today, we join America in honoring Juneteenth, the day reserved for recognizing the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said in a statement. While even today our nation continues to work towards healing from this legacy of the past, we look ahead with optimism that there is far more that unites us in America than divides us.

Excerpt from:

Biden says rooting out systemic racism is 'moral obligation of our time' | TheHill - The Hill

Minneapolis did everything Barack Obama asked it to.

Its mayor and City Council appointed a reform-minded police chief who emphasized a guardian mentality instead of a warrior one. They held listening sessions with the community and updated policies to create more transparency and accountability. They promoted officer wellness by offering yoga and meditation classes.

Yet none of this stopped officer Derek Chauvin from pinning his knee on the neck of George Floyd until he lost consciousness and died.

Minneapolis is a case study in a city that embraced the pillars of the final report from the Presidents Task Force on 21st Century Policing, a signature blueprint from the Obama era on how to reform American law enforcement. After five years, the city is no closer to achieving the primary objective of creating trust between police and the communities they serve.

After the killing of Floyd and the uprising against police that followed, culminating in the torching of the Third Precinct station, Minneapolis is at a crossroads. It can continue on the path of slow cultural change, or it can opt for a blank slate to end the current policing system as we know it, as City Council Member Alondra Cano, who heads the councils committee on public safety, said recently.

The 21st Century Policing model for reform came out of a moment similar to the one Minneapolis faces now. In August 2014, a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, a young black man, in Ferguson, Mo. The shooting and decision not to indict the officer laid bare long-standing civil unrest over racial disparities in policing and use of force. It led to protests and riots throughout the suburban St. Louis city and a federal investigation that determined the Ferguson Police Department engaged in a pattern of unlawful and racist policing.

In May 2015, the Presidents Task Force on 21st Century Policing released a report of recommendations for cities to move into a new era of law enforcement. The document emphasized the need for a cultural revolution in American police departments, which the authors said would come through more transparency and accountability. Police would have to reset their philosophy to focus on community policing rather than the militarized, warrior-minded tactics embraced by so many officers. The trust of skeptical citizens key to a functioning democracy, according to the report would come from police forces reflecting the values of the communities in which they work.

One barrier that has prevented Minneapolis from achieving these goals has been pushback from the police union and its president, Lt. Bob Kroll, against policy and culture change, said Michelle Phelps, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. Last year, when Mayor Jacob Frey announced Minneapolis would become the first city to ban warrior-style training, Kroll countered by publicly announcing free warrior training for rank-and-file officers.

Cultural change is really hard, Phelps said. We can see the resistance to this change in the election and re-election of Bob Kroll. And the union exerts its own independent push against reform.

There is also a bureaucracy that complicates the very idea of ground-level change. Phelps points out that Minneapolis is under jurisdiction of not only Minneapolis police, but also University of Minnesota police, park police, Metro Transit police and state and federal law enforcement, all of whom answer to different leadership hierarchies.

The Minneapolis Police Department has made some progress toward more accountability over the past five years. In 2016, following the police killing of Jamar Clark, a black man, the department updated its use-of-force policy with greater emphasis on sanctity of life. The new language made it possible for the city to take swift action against Chauvin and the other three officers who stood by and watched as Floyd pleaded that he couldnt breathe, Phelps said.

The fact that all four officers got fired immediately means something, she said. And yet its woefully inadequate.

Its too early to say whether Minneapolis is giving up entirely on the Obama model. A majority of the City Council has publicly committed to dismantling the police department, but they have yet to come to a clearly defined consensus of what that means. Phelps said even radical changes could end up looking more like a 21st Century Policing-plus model than an entirely new playbook.

The death of Floyd has moved the Overton window the range of ideas deemed politically acceptable insanely quickly, Phelps said. I think everybodys catching their breath and trying to figure out what that means.

The measure of success of a functional police department is also in the eye of the beholder, said Sandra Susan Smith, a sociology professor at University of California-Berkeley.

Communities of color in particular have historically seen the role of police as about confinement and control vs. protect and serve, Smith said. Through that lens, many Americans view efforts to make police more accountable as nibbling around the edges, rather than addressing the fundamental problems of policing head on.

Some people argue that police are doing exactly what theyre intended to do, she said.

The 21st Century Policing model is predicated on the philosophy that police are an important resource in communities, Smith said. Making dramatic changes including better training, more accountability and redirecting some police duties to other city departments could still be compatible with the Obama-era reform model.

What is incompatible is the abolition of the police, she said.

Earlier this month, the City Council approved a resolution for intent to create a transformative new model for cultivating safety in our city. Mayor Frey, who signed the resolution, is pushing for change within the current department, rather than starting over. What exactly changes will likely come down to Minneapolis voters in the form of a referendum, which some council members say could appear on the ballot this year.

In the meantime, unrest over American policing continues to generate protests across the country in the name of Floyd and other victims of police brutality. Many look to Minneapolis for what comes next.

Continued here:

Killing of George Floyd shows that years of police reform fall far short - Minneapolis Star Tribune

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There may be no more appropriate day this year to publish a podcast focused on one of the most outspoken and socially active restaurant brands, &pizza, than today, June 19, also known as Juneteenth. On this same date in 1865, a Union army general proclaimed all slaves in Texas the last and then most remote of the so-called "slave states" to be free. The day preceded the official abolition of slavery in the U.S. on Dec. 6 of that same year.

This year, of course, Juneteenth has particular relevance following the past month of nationwide protests and other forms of social activism that have highlighted the violence and injustice still levied on black Americans some 155 years after that first Juneteenth.

And of course, Washington D.C.-based &pizza has been a part of that national discourse, even providing its employees known as its Tribe paid time off from work if they wished to take part in activism pushing for changes in what has been described as the institutional victimization of blacks, following the death of Minnesotan George Floyd in police custody last month.

"&pizza is, and has always been about unity,"&pizza COO Andy Hoopersaid during the podcast. "As we celebrate Juneteenth this year, issues of racial inequality, policing, and community feel particularly poignant. The parallels between this day in 1865 and today in 2020 are too similar and the work is nowhere near finished, which is why &pizza is offering its employees PTO for activism, PTO for Election Day, and the opportunity to make the changes they want to see in the world.

"As a representative of the food service industry which employs 10% of the American workforce &pizza is championing activism at the most grassroots level: its own staff. This year on Juneteenth, it celebrates the Black community and stands in unity with their continued fight by encouraging its peers in the QSR space to do the same."

In today's podcast, Hooper discusses the brand's activism, along with how it fits into the company's larger business picture, especially during this protest- and pandemic-pocked year.

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&pizza COO breaks down the business-building power of activism - QSRweb.com

Juneteenth revelers and demonstrators gathered at strategic locations in D.C. on Friday for protests against police brutality and societal inequality.

Juneteenth marks the date June 19, 1865 that all enslaved black people in the U.S. learned they were free. It was more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, when a Union Army general read federal orders to enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the South in 1863, but it was not enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865.

And on Friday, 155 years later, holiday revelers and demonstrators took to the streets throughout D.C. and the greater Washington area both to celebrate and protest police brutality that has taken a national spotlight in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Stay with WTOP all day Friday, June 19, for coverage from our team of reporters in the District, Maryland and Virginia following the Juneteenth celebrations and protests. Please check back for the latest developments as the day continues.

In D.C., students, teachers and even professional basketball players gathered in strategic locations to call attention to the inequalities faced in American society by African Americans and to push for change.

In a particularly striking moment, a group that included NBA star Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards, and Natasha Cloud of the WNBA champion Washington Mystics started their day at Capital One Arena.

WTOPs sports anchor Dave Preston joined the group as it went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and eventually made its way to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

The Wizards and Mystics organization (each owned by Monumental Sports) stopped at the King statue and read the names of African-Americans who have been killed recently by police or white supremacists in hate incidents.

This isnt a barbecue, were going to be out here marching regardless, said one speaker at the protest at the base of the statue, according to WTOPs Alejandro Alvarez. The speaker was referencing the darkening late-afternoon skies portending a storm in the District.

Cloud said members of both the Wizards and Mystics can work together to push for change. Collectively, she said, this is where were going to get action done.

Alvarez said the group knelt for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, the length of time that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on the neck of George Floyd. During the near 9-minute period, the transcript of what Floyd said as he was dying was read aloud.

Among his final words: I cant breathe; My neck hurts; My stomach hurts; Theyre going to kill me; and mama.

Another group approached Black Lives Matter Plaza, just north of the White House on Friday, dancing to the beat of Go-Go, the original music of D.C.

Backyard Band, legendary purveyors of the sound, launched a rolling concert on a flatbed truck heading toward the White House.

Its still a protest, not a party, organizer Ron Moten said. Were talking to people as we go and giving out information along with the music.

Outside the White House, several hundred people gathered as blue skies started giving way to storm clouds.

They can kill our leaders! Lord knows they have. But they cannot kill a movement, activist Joella Roberts said over a bullhorn. Dont be scared. Thats what they thrive on fear and ignorance.

Earlier in the day, one of the first groups to take to the streets was a group of students and teachers advocating for both the District and the federal government to offer more support to students of color.

WTOPs John Domen was there just after 10 a.m. The group was working on signs to bring on their march to the U.S. Department of Education building across the National Mall, near Fourth Street Southwest.

Domen said one goal of those who assembled Friday morning was to ask the federal government to allocate more money to schools that have been struggling for generations. While the march went to the U.S. Education Departments campus, protest leaders said the government in D.C. deserves its share of criticism, too.

Domen spoke with Nandi Taylor, an elementary school teacher in D.C., who helped organize the protest. We want to see them spend less money on police, and more money on mental health, Taylor said. We want to see a revised curriculum, so its more reflective of true history and our students needs.

Many of those students come from Wards 7 and 8, Taylor said.

Taylor also said standardized testing needs to be abolished or revised. Taylor wanted to remind D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that she should be directing the Districts funding away from police and toward education.

The deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor in Louisville,Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta and others have sparked outrage and renewed calls for changes in policy and laws.

Earlier on Friday, Louisvilles mayor said that one of three police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Taylor will be fired.

Juneteenth is a blending of the words June and Nineteenth, is also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Independence Day for black Americans. Its recognized in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation.

Hawaii, North Dakota and South Dakota are the only states without an official recognition.

It is not a federal holiday.

On Capitol Hill, WTOPs Mitchell Miller reported Texas lawmakers would propose that June 19 become a national holiday. Both Sen. John Cornyn (R) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D) have proposals in the works. A vote in the Democratic-led House will take place next Thursday on police reform.

It took roughly 18 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. before his birthday was observed as a federal holiday.

The abolition of slavery in the U.S. did not equate to equality for black Americans.

The birth of Jim Crow segregation followed, relegating many black Americans to poor, redlined neighborhoods with under-resourced schools.

And after the passage of landmark civil rights protections in the 1960s, decades of mass incarceration policy and employment discrimination eroded opportunities and economic stability for black people and families. All along, police brutality has been a fixture of the black American experience.

In addition to the disparity in the way authorities treat black Americans, the novel coronavirus has shown what many people already knew: Black people do not have good enough healthcare. While African Americans make up less than 15% of the population, nearly one-third of those who have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. are black.

This week, the Equal Justice Initiative which in 2015 cataloged thousands of racial terror lynchings of black people by white mobs added nearly 2,000 Reconstruction-era lynchings confirmed between 1865 and 1876, bringing the total number of documented lynchings to nearly 6,500.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mitchell Miller/WTOP

Mitchell Miller/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

John Domen/WTOP

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John Domen/WTOP

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Juneteenth: Athletes and teachers join protest for change - WTOP

Down where we are, food is used as a political weapon. Fannie Lou Hamer

As calls for abolition, defunding and disbanding police departments, and reallocating critical city resources animate the American landscape, we are facing an imminent opportunity to draw connections between people in prisons and our food system.

For some, abolition conjures images of a past thought gone. For those folks, images of slave patrols and plantations seem unrelated to the current wave of uprisings following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. But for others, abolition is a relevant, timely, and necessary injunction. Abolition invites a critical-historical awareness of unfreedom and a creative prescription toward the possibilities of freedom.

The coronavirus pandemic has re-cast our food workerscashiers, delivery persons, and farmersas essential. What of those who labor on prison farms?

While prison labor specifically and mass incarceration more generally have been debated over the years, researchers have been slow to make either theoretical or empirical claims that link incarceration and the food system, despite the United States history with using enslaved and incarcerated labor to produce food. Abolitionist theory cites the plantation as both a geography and way of thinking whose logic has remained consistent, despite its changing material form. The prison is one of those forms.

Many historians have written about the development and role of the convict lease system in rebuilding the South after the Civil War. Companies and plantation owners leased prisoners to build railroads and perform agricultural labor. In Texas, for example, the convict lease system not only provided labor for companies and planters but also helped the state strengthen itself financially. When the convict lease system formally ended in 1910, the Texas penitentiary system continued its investment in agriculture, purchasing former plantations in east Texas and along the Gulf Coast. Some of those former plantations make up the 130,000 agricultural acres currently maintained and operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The coronavirus pandemic has re-cast our food workersas essential. What of those who labor on prison farms?

On Texas prison farms in 2017, incarcerated men and women raised 30 crops that produced more than 11.7 million pounds of food; harvested 123.7 million pounds of cotton, grains, and grasses; tended chickens that produced just under 5 million eggs; canned 297,143 cases of vegetables; and processed more than 22.7 million pounds of meat. The state, in effect, operates its own miniature food system that feeds people who are incarcerated there (the Texas Department of Criminal Justice boasts about being self-sufficient) as well as commercial sales of food to the public.

Prison labor is not solely used to feed prison populations or to supply state agencies. In 2018, the nonprofit food justice organization Food First published an article that asked: Is Prison Labor the Future of Our Food System? The group detailed how private companies have turned to prison labor to make up for the shortage of farmworkers due to anti-immigration legislation. Across the U.S. 30,000 incarcerated people provide onions, watermelons, potatoes, and other produce for private companies to sell for public consumption.

Food Firsts question does not have an inevitable answer. As a terrain of struggle, abolition is as much about building the institutions, relationships, and worlds we want to live in as it is about dismantling those we reject. And we are not building from scratch: The seeds and fragments of a more just, community-controlled food system that honors the healing potential of working the land are already present. Abolitionist theory also makes connections between how power that is concentrated in police forces and prisons flows into other parts of our lives through channels such as the food system.

A contemporary abolitionist practice must create the conditions for healthy communities. To that end, the work of nourishing people and building just food systems is necessary. Just as sure as we must end state violence in the form of police and prisons, we also must deepen our capacity to meet the needs of people and build anew. What we build cannot be yet another transformation of a system that privileges and protects private property, exploits labor, or maintains hierarchies of deservedness.

Where can we turn when we want to see abolitionism in practice? We turn to the prison strikes and uprisings that used food as a political weapon in the fight for more humane conditions. We turn to incarcerated farmers who, even as they labor under confinement, point to the revolutionary possibilities of farming itself, particularly in the context of prisons, where idleness is a threat to individual and communal well-being. We turn to the folks who built Black towns to make freedom spaces and examples of community land trusts and cooperative enterprises. We turn to food justice organizations with radical Black leadership that use food to build infrastructure for maintaining Black life rather than hastening Black death. In these examples, we see fragments and building blocks that challenge exploitation and private property while also overturning the centuries-old plantation paradigm of violence and control.

As we continue to uplift abolitionist demands, those of us also committed to land and food work must insist on building self-determining food economies and fully commit to overturning the food systems plantation paradigm. Indeed, in the world where we defund and disband police departments, shutter prisons and penal farms, and end hyper-surveillance, we must also consider what we want to build that is essential? An abolitionist approach to food requires us to build community, grow food, and nurture people. All this must happen alongside the dismantling of plantation-prisons.

Top photo: Parchman Penal Farm. Male prisoners hoeing in a field in Mississippi. (Public domain photo by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

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Op-ed: Overthrowing the Food Systems Plantation Paradigm - Civil Eats

On the Issue of Slavery in New York State

By Don Rittner

The recent decision by Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan on unilaterally decidinig to bring down the Philip Schuyler statue because he had slaves shows the ignorance that most local politicians have on the issue of Slavery.

While all agree that slavery was legal, accepted, and being practiced for thousands of years, there was an epiphany by many of the early New York State forefathers that slavery should be abolished. It was not an easy thing to do, particularly in the Hudson Valley, which housed the largest number of slaves. Present day Albany and New York City have the dubious claim to fame to where it all began in the 17th century in our state.

New Yorkers like John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, George Clinton, James Duane, Daniel Tomkins, Philip Schuyler and others made it their business to try and end slavery through legal means and make amends for sins of the past. It was not easy considering at the time that Albany was settled by the Dutch and Philip Schuyler, who himself was from a wealthy and prestigious Dutch family, had to go against his own people to convince a still Dutch stronghold such as Albany that it needed to abolish a system that was always here. Many Albanians and landowners owned slaves for example:

Killian K Van Rensselaer, Patrick Clark, John Jac. Beeckman, Robert Yates, John W. Watkins, Francis Nicolle, Leonart Gansevoort, Thomas Lottridge, Nicholas Frats, Gilbert Jenkins, Renier I. Van Irveren, John Ten Broeck, James Caldwell, Abraham Ten Broeck (12 slaves), Pieter Schuyler, first mayor of Albany, and son Philip Schuyler (13 slaves, most of the hard work on his farm was done by white tenant farmers according to the Schuyler Mansion Web site), to name a few.

Between 1646-1820 there were 250 enslavers in Albany County with a total of 4,288 slaves. The total Capital District of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy had 250, 228, and 977 respectively for a total of 728 slaveholders with 6,345 slaves during this period. By 1820 there were 645 free blacks living in Albany.

Abolishing slavery in New York was an evolutionary process and the New York State law makers grappled with it by passing law after law. The best summary of this process was published in Documents of the Senate of the State of New York 124th Session in 1901. It included a State Library Bulletin History No. 4 written by ex -judge A. Judd Northrup.

Since there has been so much erroneous comments made about slavery in NYS on Facebook and elsewhere, and about particular people like Schuyler, here is the section verbatim on the legislative history of slavery in New York.

SLAVERY UNDER STATE GOVERNMENT FROM 1776 To 1827, AND SUPPLEMENTAL

When New York came to statehood in 1776 it had a population, as we have seen, of about 169,148 whites and 21,993 blacks, or the blacks constituted about 11 1/2% of the entire population. Up to this time there had been little legislation tending to mitigate the hardships of slavery, or indicating any relaxation of the old idea that slaves were to be regarded and treated solely as property. The colony of New York was no worse, and perhaps no better, in this respect than the other colonies.

The declaration of independence and the wide promulgation and general discussion of the doctrines of freedom and the rights of man, however, threw a new light on the subject. The self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, though intended by its proclaimers to apply to white men only, was yet seed sown in many minds and hearts, where it grew into doubts at least of the rightfulness of negro slavery. Liberty and equality was a phrase that shook all Europe when shouted in revolutionary France; and it made men think beyond the old limitations of race lines when reechoed in America. The revolutionary fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Madison, and many others, voiced what was perhaps a not uncommon sentiment among the better and more intelligent classes at this time, in declaring slavery to be an evil and a wrong, and in expressing the hope and belief that it would speedily come to an end in the republic. If this sentiment prevailed to some extent in the southern states, where slaves were numerous and slavery profitable, as we know it did, it is reasonable to believe that, to an equal if not greater extent, it pervaded New York and the other northern states, where slaves were few in number and their employment was of little pecuniary value.

The exigencies of the war of the revolution were the cause of the first state legislation mentioning slaves. The war had dragged along for five years, and the drain on the scanty population to supply the needs of the army had been severe. There had never been an extreme reluctance to use free negroes as soldiers, and these had fought side by side with white men all through the war thus far; but it was a pressing need indeed that made the whites willing to employ slaves as soldiers. The emergency, however, was great, and Mar. 20, 1781 was passed An Act for raising two regiments for the Defense of this State, on Bounties of unappropriated Lands.

In the act was the following:

VI. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That any person who shall deliver one or more of his or her able bodied male slaves to any warrant officer as aforesaid, to serve in either of the said regiments or independent corps, and produce a certificate thereof, signed by any officer or person authorized to muster and receive the men, to be raised by virtue of this act, and produce such certificate to the surveyor general, shall, for every male slave so entered or mustered as aforesaid, be entitled to the location and grant of one right, [to 500 acres of bounty lands], in manner as in and by this act is directed; and shall be, and hereby is discharged from any future maintenance of such slave; any law to the contrary notwithstanding; and such slave, so entered as aforesaid, who shall serve for the term of three years, or until regularly discharged, shall, immediately after such service or discharge, be, and is hereby declared to be a free man of this state.

This was followed, soon after the war, by an act, passed May 12, 1784 entitled An Act for the speedy sale of the confiscated and forfeited Estates within this State, and for other Purposes therein mentioned, referring to estates forfeited to the state by attainder or conviction in the progress of the late war. It contained the following provision:

And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the said commissioner or commissioners shall, out of any monies which may come into his or their hands for rents, make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of any slave or slaves who may be found unable to support themselves, and who belonged to, and have not been disposed of by any person or persons, whose respective estates have become confiscated or forfeited to the people of this state.

This act was so amended May 1, 1786 as to manumit all negro slaves become the property of the state, by the attainder or conviction of any person whomsoever, and in the possession of the commissioners of forfeitures, who were required to provide, at the expense of the state, for the comfortable subsistence of all old and feeble slaves unable to gain a subsistence, so forfeited in their respective districts.

An act, with the misleading title, An Act granting bounty on hemp to be raised within this state, etc. and for other purposes, was passed Ap. 12, 1785. It provided:

That if any negro or other person to be imported or brought into this state from any of the United States or from any other place or country after the first day of June next, shall be sold as a slave or slaves within this state, the seller or his or her factor or agent, shall be deemed guilty of a public offense, and shall for every such offense forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds lawful money of New York, to be recovered by any person who will sue for the same in an action of debt, in any court of this state having cognizance of the same, together with costs of suit. . . That every such person imported or brought into this state and sold contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act shall be freed.

Also,

That when any person or persons hereafter shall be disposed to manumit his, her or their slave or slaves, and shall previous thereto procure a certificate signed by the overseers of the poor (or the major part of them) of the town, manor, district or precinct, together with two justices of the peace of the county where such person or persons shall reside, and if in the counties of New York or Albany then from the mayor or recorder any two of the aldermen certifying that slave or slaves appear to be under fifty years of age, and of sufficient ability to provide for themselves, and shall cause such certificates of manumission to be registered in the office of the clerk of the town, manor, district or precinct, in which the master or mistress may reside, that then it shall be lawful for such person or persons to manumit such slave or slaves without giving or providing any security to indemnify the town, manor, district or precinct; and such slave or slaves so manumitted shall be deemed, taken and adjudged to be free; and the clerk for registering such certificate shall be entitled to two shillings and no more.

That if any person by his or her last will or testament shall give his or her slave or slaves, being at the death of the testator or testatrix under fifty years of age and likewise of sufficient ability to provide for themselves, to be certified in the manner aforesaid, such freedom given as aforesaid shall, without any security to indemnify the town, manor, district or precinct, be deemed, taken and adjudged to be good and valid to all intents and purposes, any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.

That all negroes, and other persons of any description whatsoever commonly reputed and deemed slaves shall forever hereafter have the privilege of being tried by a jury in all capital cases according to the course of the common law.

An Act concerning slaves, passed Feb. 22, 1788, and being chapter 40 of the laws of that year, was a revision of the existing laws of the state relating to slaves. It was the first deliberate expression of the state legislature on the whole subject of slavery, and it may be taken as an exhibit of the temper of the people at that time on that subject. As such, it is worth reproducing, in substance at least. It enacted:

That every negro, mulatto, or mestee, within this state, who at the time of the passing of this act, is a slave, for his or her life, shall continue such, for and during his or her life, unless he or she, shall be manumitted or set free, in the manner prescribed in and by this act, or in some future law of this state.

That the children of every negro, mulatto or mestee woman, being a slave, shall follow the state and condition of the mother, and be esteemed, reputed, taken and adjudged slaves to all in tents and purposes whatsoever.

That the baptizing of any negro, or other slave, shall not be deemed, adjudged, or taken, to be a manumission of such slave.

It was further enacted that slaves should not be imported or those imported since June 1, 1785, sold as slaves, under a penalty of 100, to be sued for by action of debt, the person imported and sold to be free; that any person buying or receiving a slave with intent to remove such slave out of this state, to be sold, should foeit 100, and such slave be free.

It enacted prohibitions against concealing or harboring runaway slaves; against trafficking with slaves; against selling liquor to slaves; made owners of slaves liable to the persons damaged by thefts committed by slaves, to the amount of 5 or under: slaves to be committed to prison for striking a white person.

Slaves were to be entitled to jury trials in capital cases; slaves not to be witnesses in any case, except in criminal cases in which the evidence of one slave was to be admitted for or against an other slave.

Masters were forbidden to allow their slaves to go about begging. Pretended sales of aged or decrepit slaves to persons unable to keep and maintain them forbidden, and such sales declared void. Manumission of slaves regulated, to same effect as in laws of 1785, ch. 68 (given above, passed Ap. 12, 1785).

To those provisions were added in this act the following:

That if the owner or owners of any other slave, shall be disposed, to manumit and set at liberty, such slave, and such owner or owners, or any other sufficient person, for, or in behalf of such slave, shall and do, at the court of general sessions of the peace, for the city or county, where such negro or other slave shall dwell or reside, enter into a bond, to the people of the state of New York, with one or more surety or sureties, to be approved by such court, in sum, not less than two hundred pounds, to keep any slave from becoming or being any charge to the city, town or place within this state, wherein such slave shall at any time, after such manumission, live, the said slave shall be free, according to such manumission of the owner or owners of such slave.

And further, if any such slave hath been or hereafter shall be made free, by the last will and testament of any person deceased, and if the executor or executors of such person so deceased, or in case of the neglect or refusal of such executor or executors, if any other sufficient person, for, and in behalf of such slave, shall and do, enter into such surety as aforesaid, in manner aforesaid, then the said slave shall be free, according to the true intent and meaning of such last will and testament.

And moreover, that if any person shall, by last will or otherwise, manumit or set free, his or her slave, and no such certificate or security as aforesaid be given or obtained, such slave shall nevertheless, be considered as free from such owner, his or her executor, administrator and assigns. But such owner, his and her heirs, executors and administrators, shall remain and be liable to support and maintain such slave, if the same slave shall become unable to support and maintain himself or herself.

The law relating to manumission thus became, in substance:

1 Slaves under 50 years of age and able to support and maintain themselves, and so certified by the proper officers, might be manumitted by will or otherwise, without security being given for their future support in case they should become unable to support themselves. The master was thus freed from all farther liability on their account.

2 Any other slave, whatever his age or condition or ability, might be manumitted by will or otherwise, and become free on a bond being given for his support in case of his becoming unable to support himself.

3 If any person, by will or otherwise, manumitted a slave, and no certificate or security was given, the slave nevertheless be came free; but the owner, executors and heirs were liable for the support of the slave if he became unable to support himself.

On the subject of manumission, compare the colonial act of Dec. 10, 1712; Gov. Hunters letter to the Lords of trade, Nov. 12, 1715; the act of Nov. 2, 1717 (the result of Gov. Hunters letter) and the act of Oct. 29, 1730.

Chapter 28, laws of 1790, passed Mar. 22, 1790, An Act to amend the act entitled An Act concerning slaves, provided that slaves convicted of crime under the degree of a capital offense might be transported by the master or mistress out of the state, on the certificate of the court trying the offender, that transportation would be a proper punishment; also allowed appeals to the court of general sessions from the refusal of overseers of the poor to grant certificates for manumission of slaves appearing to be under 50 years of age and of sufficient ability to provide for themselves.

Chapter 17, laws of 1792, authorized the state treasurer to reimburse towns supporting slaves manumitted by the state on the confiscation of the estates of their owners; provided they were supported as other poor persons were.

The Quakers were among the earliest opponents They, however, sometimes owned slaves, but in many instances manumitted them, often without regard to the requisite formalities. The legislature by an act passed Mar. 9, 1798, confirmed such manumissions.

Efforts were made by the prominent statesmen of New York, soon after the formation of the state, to secure the abolition of slavery. The following, from Bancroft, reveals the feeling of the wiser men of that generation:

In the constituent convention of New York, Gouverneur Morris struggled hard for measures tending to abolish domestic slavery, so that in future ages every human being who breathed the air of the state might enjoy the privileges of a freeman. The proposition, though strongly supported, especially by the interior and newer counties, was lost by the vote of the counties on the Hudson. Jay lamented the want of a clause against the continuance of domestic slavery. Still, the declaration of independence was incorporated into the constitution of New York; and all its great statesmen were opposed to slavery. All parts of the common law, and all statutes and acts repugnant to the constitution, were abrogated and repealed by the constitution itself.

The New England states and Pennsylvania moved more promptly and effectually in applying the principles of the declaration of independence, the logical outcome of which was the abolition of slavery. New Jersey lagged behind. Even in the southern states there was a strong feeling in favor of some plan for the gradual removal of slavery, which, doubtless, would have culminated in legislative action but for the sudden and disastrous increase in the value of slave labor.

Finally, however, Mar. 29, 1799, New York passed its first great act (laws of 1799, ch. 62) for the gradual abolition of slavery. It enacted:

That any child born of a slave within this state after the fourth day of July next, shall be deemed and adjudged to be born free: Provided nevertheless that such child shall be the servant of the legal proprietor of his or her mother, until such servant if a male shall arrive at the age of twenty-eight years, and if a female at the age of twenty-five years.

That the master of the mother shall be entitled to the services of such child.

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On the Issue of Slavery in New York State - Albany Times Union

Great Britain has done much for the world but sadly its links with slavery cannot be ignored. The Black Lives Matter movement is shining a bright light on this chapter in the country's history - the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol is arguably the most memorable image of 2020 so far.

But what of Yorkshire's connections to slavery?

British merchants were among the largest participants in the Atlantic slave trade that saw Africans forcibly sent to work in the Caribbean. A campaign for the abolition of slavery, led most notably by Yorkshireman William Wilberforce, saw the Slave Trade Act enacted in 1807, effectively banning the practice.

Wilberforce, who was from the Hull area, became an MP for the county and the leading force in a 20-year-long campaign to get slavery abolished.

But despite the steps taken to get rid of slavery, the lasting legacy of slavery can still be seen stamped up and down the country - even though you might not have realised it until the Black Lives Matters protests began.

Yorkshire is no exception with a large number of historic buildings and country estates paid for by noblemen and women with ties to plantation profits harvested by slaves.

While we cannot re-write history, experts from the University College London have created a database that shows the mark left by former slave-owners on the physical fabric of Britain was "considerable".

It reveals a list of prominent buildings and monuments that were built by, dedicated to or developed by people who owned slaves or inherited money from slave owners.

There are many ways of keeping up-to-date with everything happening across Yorkshire as our journalists work day and night to bring you the very latest news.

We have our YorkshireLive app which is completely customisable and means you will only get the news which matters to you.

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Below is a list of some of the prominent buildings in Yorkshire that have links to the slave trade:

Harewood Housenear Leeds

Records show that Henry Lascelles, the Earl of Harewood, made his fortune from the slave trade. The Lascelles family who own Harewood House had interests in 47 sugar plantations and owned thousands of slaves in Barbados and across the West Indies. They werent unique most merchants of the period were involved in the slave trade. Chair of its trustees David Lascelles issued a statement in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and Harewoods connections to slavery.

Shibden Hall, Halifax

Most famous as home for the lesbian diarist Anne Lister, Shibden Hall later became home to Louisa Ann Grant, wife of John Lister who inherited the hall from Anne Lister. Louisa's father Major Charles Grant was involved with the Adelphi estate on St Vincent where 485 were enslaved.

Duncombe Park, Helmsley

Now a tourist attraction and wedding venue, it was owned by Charles Duncombe, a Conservative MP from 1790 to 1826. He was associated with the Morning Star Estate on the island of Nevis where 111 were enslaved.

Scruton Hall, Bedale

Its owner in the early 18th century was Foster Lechmere Coore, who came from a family of merchants in Liverpool. After attending Eton and Cambridge he and his brother Frederick were involved with the sugar plantation at St James, Jamaica, were 293 slaves were held.

Hellaby Hall, Rotherham

Now an upmarket hotel, it was once the home of Quaker sugar merchant and slave owner Ralph Fretwell. He returned from Barbados to Rotherham circa 1690 to build Hellaby Hall, which at one time was owned by the Eden family, whose descendant Anthony Eden went on to be Prime Minister in 1955.

Thirkleby Park, North Yorkshire

The records show owner Sir William Payne Gallwey was a British Army officer and slave owner. 137 were enslaved at the Pond and Fancy Estates on St Kitts where Thirkleby Park owner Sir William had an interest. He was a Deputy Lieutenant and J.P. for the North Riding of Yorkshire. The Payne family were wealthy West India planters. Thirkleby Hall was demolished in 1927 and the site is now used as a holiday caravan park.

The Mount Royale Hotel, York

Owned by attorney and slave owner George Kirlew. Kirlew was linked to nine estates in Jamaica, with approximately 300 people enslaved across the island. Kirlew was living at the Mount, York in 1841, ironically with his wife Ann Bruce of mixed heritage who was born in Jamaica.

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Seven historic Yorkshire buildings with links to the slave trade - Yorkshire Live

Pictured: the 2018 Berkeley Juneteenth Festival. This year, Juneteenth falls on Friday, June 19, but a live event wont happen because of the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Nancy Rubin

In early May, the organizers of the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival which was set to happen this coming Sunday made the difficult decision to call off the hugely popular event amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. KQED reported Thursday that the annual gathering has been reimagined as an online commemoration, including daily posts on the Juneteenth Facebook page to spark conversations and reflection.

Last year, Berkeleyside contributor Aaron Welch wanted to find out how the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival, which began in 1986, came to be. The event, which celebrates the abolition of slavery in the United States, is believed to be one of the longest running Juneteenth celebrations in Northern California. This year, Juneteenth falls on Friday, June 19.

This week, Delores Nochi Cooper, who has organized the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival for 33 years, told KQED she has planned this years Juneteenth as a virtual event entitled No Justice, No Emancipation.' It will take the form of an online commentary with writings from writers and artists about the pandemic, civil unrest and the current status of Black lives.' Learn more on the Juneteenth Facebook page.

Today, to commemorate the occasion, Berkeleyside is republishing Welchs interview with Cooper. The interview has been updated and lightly edited for republication.

Juneteenth started in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. It was the final execution of the Emancipation Proclamation. When the formerly enslaved folks in Galveston heard they were finally free (more than two years after President Lincoln issued the executive order), they flooded the streets and rejoiced.

This celebration has become a tradition for African American communities in the South, as well as for African Americans who migrated to other parts of the United States.

About 30 years ago, the Adeline-Alcatraz Merchants Association was organized to promote small businesses in South Berkeley. They started Juneteenth to highlight the Adeline Corridor and to promote community pride and cooperation. We celebrated our first annual Juneteenth festival in 1986. In 1987, the nonprofit (Berkeley Juneteenth Cultural Celebrations) was established.

Juneteenth is a cultural event, kind of like Chinese New Year or Cinco de Mayo, where we celebrate our diversity. It unifies us as a community when we come to celebrate. But its also come to mean other things. The opportunity to celebrate the music, the culture and the traditions (of African Americans), has given us the opportunity to expand (Juneteenth) by allowing us to highlight the contributions that African Americans have made to the fabric of America as a whole. So it has evolved in that we want to educate and involve the community at large in our history, and welcome the community to come and participate along with us.

The other transition that weve gone through is that we offer economic opportunities through our vending, which has grown. We have about 150 African American vendors, who primarily feature ethnic wares.

Martin Luther King Jr. Way was a kind of Mason-Dixon line (for Berkeley), and most of the activity and the residence that occurred in the Black community was in South Berkeley. It was the center of African American jobs, businesses, etc. in the 1950s and 60s. South Berkeley is where African Americans migrated from the South to work in the shipyards, etc. in Richmond.

Also, at the time that the Japanese were interned and lost their homes in South Berkeley, some of those homes were taken over by Blacks. So that was the first opportunity that Black people had to own property in Berkeley, but it was at the expense of the Japanese people who lived in that area before. So its quite a history.

No. South Berkeley has changed tremendously. African Americans are down to about 8% of the Berkeley population. (Census figures show that in 1970, African Americans represented 23.5% of the Berkeley population.) Our population has dwindled down, certainly in South Berkeley. A lot of folks, after their parents passed away, sold their properties and moved to other parts of the Bay Area, like Oakland, where the rent was cheaper.

In our 33 years of existence, our consistent theme has been celebrating the African American experience and using the organization as a vehicle to demonstrate that the community is a part of and not outside of the societys mainstream. We do this by featuring and celebrating our culture and our music, and by providing new and upcoming talent with the opportunity to perform professionally.

A lot of people dont know it, but H.E.R. (the R&B musical artist) performed on our stage as an 11-year-old. Fast forward 10 years, shes now a Grammy Award-winning singer. We really take that seriously. I think its really important to provide an avenue for up-and-coming talent to perform professionally on a stage like ours.

Another part of our tradition is celebrating and acknowledging the Black history-makers in South Berkeley, like William Byron Rumford (thefirst African Americanelected to a state public office in Northern California), Henry Ramsey Jr. (alawyer and Alameda County Superior Court judgewho advocated on behalf of African American communities), Frances Albrier (a civil rights activist who became thefirst African American womanto be hired at Richmond Shipyard No. 2, among other achievements), and Mable Howard (who organized the community against BARTs original plan to runabove ground in South Berkeley, which would have divided the predominantly African American neighborhood from the rest of the city). All those individuals have historical markers that identify them as history-makers in South Berkeley in the 1950s and 60s.

We utilize local Black visual artists in the creation of all of our images. Those images are displayed around the community, including our banners on the festival corridor between Alcatraz Avenue and Woolsey Street, which were created by a local South Berkeley artist by the name of Mildred Howard.

We acknowledge that our community has indeed come a mighty long way and therein lies our strength. We also acknowledge that theres a continual fight for equal justice under the law, and we support that and hope that our program emphasizes that with our themes, what we talk about on the stage, and (through) the other organizations that (Berkeley Juneteenth Cultural Celebrations) is involved with.

I think its really important that we invite the community at large. We want other groups to feel welcome to come and acknowledge and celebrate along with us, and celebrate us for one day and we call it Juneteenth Day.

Connect with the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival on its website and Facebook page.

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Berkeley's Juneteenth Festival began in 1986; this year it has gone online - Berkeleyside

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Since the casual killing of George Floyd on camera, unprecedented protests not policy papers have radically shifted public opinion in support of the battle against systemic racism. The new nation being born in our streets may yet blossom into Langston Hughess land that never has been yet / and yet must be but only if this movement refuses to let its truths be marched into the narrow cul-de-sac of police reform.

Yes, years of police killings of unarmed African-Americans had stacked up like dry tinder. True, George Floyds public murder furnished the spark. But freedoms forge must finish its work while the coals are hot. This is the hour to reimagine what America could become if We the People meant all of us. America needs what this movement intends to do: change history, after which police training manuals will follow.

We have witnessed a multicolored and intergenerational uprising whose power grows more poised and peaceful by the day, winning support that reveals a newly mobilized majority in our midst. Let no one mistake peace for quiet, however, nor mistake the rage over police violence as ignoring the roots of policy violence and poverty violence. The ruthless indifference of our governments to the poor was clear well before Covid-19 laid it bare.

Cries of I cant breathe call out in compelling shorthand Americas enduring racial chasm in every measure of well-being: health care and infant mortality, wages and wealth, unemployment, education, housing, policing and criminal justice, water quality and environmental safety. The bills that bustle through our legislatures offer narrow reforms of police procedures and bypass the fullness of what the protesters are saying: The children of privilege are protected not by a higher grade of policing but by deeper layers of resources and that is what ought to protect all of our children.

That so many Indigenous nations have joined the protests should surprise no one. The challenges that confront African-Americans are endemic to these peoples as well. Their unique, continuing struggle to exercise their sovereignty against a continuing conquest reminds us of how deep and various are our struggles against white supremacy. Their own modern Selma water cannons used on peaceful protesters on a 23-degree winter night happened near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in November 2016.

The marching feet say what the Congress cannot yet hear: Our national history and character carved these scars into our body politic. Policy tinkering will not heal them. If we are to understand the pressing need for radical reconstruction of our nation in this moment, we must look back to see how 400 years of compromises with white supremacy brought us to this place. The American Revolutions dreams deferred now call us to a brighter common future.

To hear that call, we might turn to Monticello, where an enslaved woman fetched future-President Thomas Jefferson the lamp by which he framed Gods unalienable human rights, and to Constitution Hall, where the founders secured the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity by compromising with racial tyranny.

It is crucial to remember that many patriots of that Revolution found slavery incompatible with its meaning. Mr. Jeffersons 1774 A Summary of the Rights of British America claimed, The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies. That he wrote this while holding a deed to a baby girl who would one day bear him six children only marks the human paradox of chattel slavery in a democratic republic.

At the Constitutional Convention, Southern delegates required that the document bow to slavery. Fearful of the Norths larger electorate, the planters nixed direct national elections and created the Electoral College to constrain the popular will. They demanded their property in dark flesh be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of white representation in Congress. Such measures gave the Southern planters power beyond their numbers; for 32 of our first 36 years, presidents hailed from Virginia and enslaved other Americans.

Jefferson knew America had gained a nation at great cost to its soul. Slavery, he predicted, was the speck in our horizon which is to burst on us as a tornado, sooner or later. That tornado roared in 1861 as the nation plunged into Civil War. Nearly 200,000 black soldiers battled for the Union. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant reported that their valor constituted the heaviest blow yet to the Confederacy. After the victory, African-American families gathered in Freedmens Conventions across the South. These men and women sought schools for their children, protection from Ku Klux Klan terror and full citizenship.

The interracial Reconstruction governments created the Souths first public schools and eased restrictions on voting for poor whites as well as freed people. Black citizenship so offended Southern conservatives, however, that by the mid-1870s they turned to unspeakable violence to crush all dreams of a nonracial We the People. Between Emancipation and the turn of the 20th century, interracial fusion political alliances, mostly between poor farmers, black and white, emerged in states of the former Confederacy. Most were surprisingly robust and persistent. In three states of the Upper South, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, these fusion movements actually took state power. These hopeful democratic experiments ended by blood, not ballots. Tyrants dubbing themselves Redeemers stole We the People from us and built the Jim Crow South on white supremacy, ending hopes for democracy until the 1960s.

Even now, the ancient lie of white supremacy remains lethal. It has left millions of African-American children impoverished in resegregated and deindustrialized cities. It embraces high-poverty, racially isolated schools that imperil our children and our future. It shoots first and dodges questions later. Not everything that is faced can be changed, James Baldwin instructs, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Change requires an honest confrontation with our history and what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the strength to love. These new American revolutionaries speak their love and strength in language less about right and left than right and wrong. They demand a genuine democracy and are skeptical of democratic braying from a Congress that watched the U.S. Supreme Court wipe its feet on the Voting Rights Act. Nobody in these protests intends to accept a democracy that consistently fails to ensure that all Americans, including people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students, have easy and equal access to the ballot. They consider it common sense that democracy will not survive without high-quality, well-funded and diverse schools.

What Dorothy Day called a revolution of the heart is blossoming in our streets, where the revolutionaries seem confident that America can spend less on endless war and the police state, make the 1 percent and the corporations pay a fair share and be able to ensure health care, living wages and affordable housing for all. All demand that our legacy must include a livable planet. Black and white, immigrant and Indigenous, Asian-American and Latinx, straight and L.G.B.T.Q., of every hue and faith, they make it plain: These things will require not mere policy tinkering but dismantling the interlocking systems created by and for white supremacy and gender-based oppressions.

Their stunning faith in the possibilities of American democracy will be their gift to both our ancestors and our descendants. And they are inspiring a nation to summon once more the courage to change history. America never was America to me, Mr. Hughes writes. And yet I swear this oath: America will be!

William Barber II and Liz Theoharis are co-chairs of the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Timothy B. Tyson is a senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Cornel West is professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University. The Poor Peoples Campaign is mobilizing a coalition of national and grass-roots justice organizations for change on June 20.

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Racism Can Be Defeated by a Revolution of the Heart - The New York Times

This is the power of the contemporary anti-racist movement: the mainstream media in the US is seriously discussing how and why the police might be abolished. Democrats are being booed and chased from rallies if they wont agree to it. A YouGov poll from mid-June found 44 percent of Americans to be in favour of cutting police budgets and reallocating the money to social welfare, while 27 percent supported the slogan defund the police.

A wide-ranging debate has broken out about what police abolition means, whether its possible, and how it might be acheived. At the heart of the debate are three verbs: reform, defund and abolish. Which should happen to the police? Does abolish really mean abolish, or is it the same as defund? Are defunding and abolition just different ways of saying reform?

Reform the usual go-to when the police have been caught murdering someone for now appears discredited. As Alex S. Vitale points out in his prescient 2017 book The End of Policing, the USs murderous militarised police are the product of decades of reform. The better training, diversification and community policing that have tended to constitute these reform efforts have led mainly to police departments having more money, better weapons, more effective PR, and a deeper implantation in the neighbourhoods where they brutalise people and kill with impunity.

Around the peak of the first incarnation of Black Lives Matter five years ago, [t]he Minneapolis police implemented trainings on implicit bias, mindfulness, de-escalation, and crisis intervention; diversified the departments leadership; created tighter use-of-force standards; adopted body cameras; initiated a series of police-community dialogues, Vitale writes in the Guardian. But none of it worked, and now the police department there is widely recognised as so institutionally rotten that in a display of desperation the Democratic-led city council recently pledged to dismantle it.

The developing consensus in progressive opinion including not only the far left, but many reformists and even a lot of the centrist liberal intelligentsia is that reform is not enough. Reform has meant little more than making the police a more effective and acceptable instrument of repressive state power. Increasingly, it is that repressive power itself which is seen as the problem. Thats the significance of the growing support for police abolition.

The concept of abolition wasnt invented in 2020. Use of the term in relation to the criminal justice system mostly concerning prisons was spearheaded by activists like Ruth Wilson Gilmore (author of Golden Gulag), Mariame Kaba, and Angela Davis. What I love about abolition ... is the idea that you imagine a world without prisons, and then you work to try to build that world, James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own, told the New York Times in 2019. But the mass movement that emerged this year has made the slogan mainstream, and it is now applied to police as well as prisons.

This is an important development. For decades, police have been gaining in prestige and firepower in the US. Polls have shown entrenched trust and respect for the police (with unsurprising variations depending on race) at the same time as faith in politicians, the media, big business and trade unions has declined. Cops have been given military-grade weapons and armoured cars and its routine for them to pepper spray and tear gas peaceful protests. Governments and parliaments everywhere are keen to give police more powers to snoop and pry. The enormous movement in the US has, in two short weeks, started to reverse that process.

The concept of police abolition isnt limited to scrapping police departments. It also means winding back the criminalisation of poverty and mental illness that results in so many poor people, and so many Black people, being forced into contact with the police contact that leads to fines, imprisonment, violence and, too often, death. You might say its about abolishing the policeability of the inequality that prevails in capitalist societies. Its an argument that the expansion of the power of the police has gone hand-in-hand with the stagnation of wages, the loss of secure jobs and decent housing for workers, and the collapse of social welfare. "We dont want to just close police departments," writes Mariame Kaba in the New York Times. "We want to make them obsolete. We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place."

These emerging debates are therefore not just about brutal state repression, but the conditions that create it: systematic racial discrimination and growing economic inequality. In a sense, this movement is picking up where the anti-racist movements of the 1960s left off: with the recognition that the extreme economic inequality of US capitalism is inextricably linked to the racism and violence that permeates its social life. The movement has created profound ideological upheaval at every level.

The first target was the racist violence of the police and the state bureaucracies that defend them when they kill. Now, instances of police brutality against Black people, but not only are suddenly being met with rapid suspensions and charges against the perpetrators, while demoralised pigs resign en masse. Floridas SWAT team and the riot-control squad of Buffalo, New York, have basically abolished themselves, with their officers quitting because they cant handle being held even partially accountable for their thuggish behaviour.

But the movement has also challenged the unreckoned-with legacy of slavery, segregation, colonialism, and imperialism, a legacy which pervades almost every social institution. It is symbolically expressed in the statues of notorious white supremacists, many of which were erected during the Jim Crow era to demonstrate the local capitalists resentment at the end of slavery and intention to keep doing what they could to disenfranchise Black people. The movements broad horizons were displayed in the early decision of protesters to target the White House a building not usually associated with the concept of policing, but more an emblem of the entire US political and social system.

And now the campaign to defund or abolish the police, although it seems at first to focus narrowly on the question of repressive state power, actually raises much broader economic and social questions. For those who worry that the movement against racism is doomed to be co-opted into liberal posturing and virtue signalling, this is a sign of a very healthy dynamic towards a confrontation with the deep structures of economic and social inequality.

But the slogans of defunding and abolishing themselves contain tricky nuances and complexities. Theres now a cottage industry of articles in mainstream newspapers with titles like: What would efforts to defund or disband police departments really mean?

Theres not always a clear differentiation between the notions of defunding and abolition. Consider the dialogue at the now celebrated failure by Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey to ingratiate himself with protesters:

Protest leader: Yes or no, will you defund the Minneapolis Police Department? Be quiet yall, its important that we actually hear this, because if yall don't know, hes up for re-election next year... and if he says no, guess what the fuck we're gonna do next year?

Frey: I do not support the full abolition of the police department.

Protester: All right, then get the fuck out of here.

At that admission from Frey, the crowd exploded into a roar of disapproval, chanting Go home, Jacob, go home. Clearly, both Frey and the protesters considered defunding and abolishing to be pretty much the same thing.

More mainstream liberal voices have published reassuring articles that argue police abolition is really just a different way of saying reform. A long-simmering movement for police abolition has become part of the national conversation, recast slightly as a call to defund the police, wrote Christy Lopez, director of Georgetown Law Schools Innovative Policing Program, in the Washington Post, Be not afraid. Defunding the police is not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds.

On the other side, theres Mariame Kabas article in the New York Times: Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish The Police. Kaba is a Black prison abolition activist. Her article is one of the most left wing articulations of the abolitionist position. It puts a heavy emphasis on fighting against economic and social inequality. But even that piece quotes, with apparent approval, Tracy Meares, of the authors of Obamas post-Ferguson Task Force on 21st Century Policing: policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed (emphasis added). Elsewhere, Kaba has, in her own words, described the meaning of prison abolition: complete and utter dismantling of prison and policing and surveillance as they currently exist (again, emphasis added).

Phrases like as we know it or as they currently exist tend to make their way into a lot of articles about abolition. Thats when the conceptual lines between abolishing, defunding, and reforming the police can get a little blurred.

Ambiguity around the term abolition sometimes makes it possible for the liberal establishment Democrats to champion the concept. The measure of success is much vaguer than that of more clear-cut demands like disarming police or cutting their budgets. You know when police have been defunded, and you know when theyve been disarmed. But its surprisingly hard to tell when theyve been abolished. The whole world is watching. We can declare policing as we know it a thing of the past, wrote Steve Fletcher, one of the Democrats who dominate the Minneapolis city council. But the much vaunted council-approved dismantling of the police in Minneapolis has turned out in practice to be a year-long feasibility study into various kinds of police reform.

Camden, New Jersey, has been held up as a model of a city that supposedly dismantled its police department. But its police chief marched at the head of the recent protests. How can a city that dismantled its police department still have a police chief? Because having dismantled the city police as part of a statewide austerity program, not the mayors sudden conversion to anarchism Camden reconstructed a new, very well-funded police force under the authority of the county government, with lots of standard community policing reforms. The newly hired officers were instructed to knock on doors and patrol streets, get to know the community, host basketball games and barbecues. This stuff isnt abolition in any meaningful sense: its a neighbourhood panopticon, involving a lot of theexpensive rebranding efforts now being derided as mere reform. And yet Camden is upheld as an abolitionist model: the city that really did abolish its police.

Behind the ambiguity of some of the slogans, the reality is relatively straightforward. Cops are cops everywhere: a brutal, racist clique of gangsters who can intimidate at will and which the authorities depend on to maintain capitalist order and protect their power. As long as capitalism exists, the police will not be abolished. A society based on inequality and exploitation needs violence and repression to keep the oppressed in line. Cities like Camden might abolish the police as we know it, but theyll only return in a rebranded form maybe with a little less of the overt sadism, but still a violent, discriminatory, and repressive force presenting itself as the defender of safety and order.

To really abolish the police would mean allowing workers to deal with problems in our communities as we see fit, without armed agents representing our rulers intervening. That would require a lot more than cutting cop budgets and redistributing wealth. The working class would have to be organised and empowered to settle disputes collectively. Such a situation would be completely incompatible with capitalism, where the unchallenged rule of capitalists in the workplace and cops in the street requires workers to exist as passive, isolated individuals. Cities and towns in which the working class run their own affairs, and the capitalist state is powerless to intercede, are cities and towns in which the political rule of the capitalist class has been overthrown.

To try to create a simulation of that while capitalism still exists is to fall into the mirage of community policing. The real end of the police will come when the working class can collectively organise a society based on satisfying human needs, rather than a society organised by the power of an exploiting class and the domination of a bureaucratic state.

Cops should be defunded, with the cuts as deep and far-reaching as possible. They should be disarmed not just of their military-grade weapons, but of their sidearms they use to settle disputes. They should be treated with scorn and seen as enemies. Poverty shouldnt be criminalised, and the poor should have access to decent welfare and employment: that should be funded not just by ripping money from police department budgets, but by attacking the accumulated wealth of the capitalists whose system the police defend. These would be positive developments in their own right, and they might, if you squint your eyes, look like the abolition of the police as we know them. But the police would still be there, temporarily weakened and on the defensive perhaps, but ready to step in where needed to protect the status quo.

Activists have to keep fighting to make prisons and police as irrelevant as possible while also fighting for the dignity and wellbeing of the oppressed.

But to really create a world without police and prisons without a force dedicated to upholding the fundamental inequalities of a society built on exploitation it wont be enough to just cut their budgets or take away their most powerful guns. Nor is it enough to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. We have to create a society that isnt divided into a ruling class, which owns property and gives orders, and the working class, which must be policed and intimidated so that it better submits to conditions of exploitation.

The militarisation and racism of the police are symptoms of a society based on fundamental principles of inequality and oppression. We cant defund the capitalist state to death: well have to overthrow it in a revolution and reconstruct a society based on collective cooperation, to make unnecessary the gang violence that today we call law enforcement.

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Defunding, disarming, defeating and abolishing the police - Red Flag