Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

For Matthew Clair, the protests following the death of George Floyd are a stark reminder of the U.S.s turbulent racial history. In 2012 when I was in graduate school, I attended several protests in Boston following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, said Clair, who is an assistant professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Trayvons death and the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives in 2014 in the wake of Ferguson profoundly affected me.

Matthew Clair (Image credit: Harrison Truong)

Clair became interested in criminal justice issues after seeing how the legal system plays a central role in the lives of Black people in the United States. As I conducted interviews and ethnographic observations among police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges and defendants in courthouses in the Northeast, I began to understand just how massive the legal systems imprint is in U.S. society, and how it intersects with racial and economic injustice.

As a professor, he has continued to add to the body of work around race and injustice in the U.S. His bookPrivilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court, which will be released in November, shows how race and class inequalities are embedded in the criminal legal system.

How does your work pertain to this moment in the United States?

Today, the protests we see erupting in city streets across the country in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and many others are symptoms of mass criminalization of the states heavy-handed, race- and class-targeted violence against its civilians.

For me, mass criminalization unlike terms like mass incarceration better articulates the vast scope of the problem. Mass criminalization speaks to state punishment beyond the prison, including policing and court processing. We often think of policing and court processing as less severe forms of system contact, but policing can be just as costly as incarceration; a police officer can take your life with little or no accountability. These punitive tools have grown so massive over the last 40 years that even non-targets, such as white people and middle-class people, are more likely to have negative encounters with police, courts, jails and prisons than in previous decades.

These issues are not new, especially not in poor Black communities. But the upswell of multiracial and cross-class collective outrage is something new, I think. And it is something that has been, no doubt, inflamed by the pandemic, economic inequality and high levels of unemployment.

What are some of the daily life interactions between communities of color and police that have ramifications in the court system?

Communities of color especially poor Black, Latino and Native American communities are routinely surveilled by police. Numerous studies in sociology and criminology have documented police surveillance, the way it manufactures crime rates, and the way it fosters cynicism among people of color. It has become the norm in many Black communities to be stopped, questioned, abused and arrested by police. White people living in privileged communities likely could not imagine such routine, negative interactions with police occurring in their own lives.

In my work, I draw a link between the injustices of policing and the injustices of court processing. For working-class and poor people of color, negative encounters with police produce feelings of cynicism and distrust that bleed into their mistrust of court officials, prosecutors and even their own defense attorneys. One common frustration among the disadvantaged criminal defendants I interviewed and observed in Boston was that their defense attorneys rarely attempted to use procedural tools such as motions to dismiss charges or suppress evidence to hold police accountable for unjust practices. In effect, court officials, on the whole, legitimate racist and class-biased policing. Thus, we have a situation where the crime or alleged violence of defendants is ripe for punishment but the violence perpetrated by the police is routinely ignored and even validated.

What do you think protesters will face in terms of court experiences?

This is a really urgent question. Much of the conversation has been around the police violence protesters are rallying against, and are themselves facing, in the streets. But protesters may also wind up in court and face charges, which could have all sorts of collateral consequences in their lives and communities. In Washington D.C., for instance, protesters have been charged with felony rioting, which can be punishable by fines or months in jail. Protesters experiences will certainly vary from state to state. In some jurisdictions, with so-called progressive prosecutors, protesters may never face any formal charges. Police may simply let people out of jail without filing reports, or prosecutors may dismiss charges. In other, more punitive jurisdictions, we could see charges pursued against people whom law enforcement has been targeting for various reasons for years. The different ways protesters will be treated speaks, again, to the inequality of our legal system and the astonishing power we give to police, prosecutors and other legal officials to make discretionary decisions about peoples lives and liberty.

In what ways do experiences of the court system and of punishment differ based on race and economic standing?

There are profound racial and class disparities along the criminal legal process from arrest, charging, and bail decisions to conviction and sentencing. Evidence varies across jurisdictions, but the most conservative estimates suggest that a meaningful proportion of these disparities can be traced to direct discrimination, unexplained by legal factors such as the nature of the offense or criminal record. Implicit bias and explicit racism among judges and prosecutors likely play a role.

In my book, I argue that institutional discrimination is also to blame. Court officials, enacting unwritten institutional norms and rules, discriminate against defendants on the basis of whether they are behaving appropriately as compliant, remorseful criminal defendants. Such performances are easier for privileged people to engage in than they are for disadvantaged people, who have been wronged by unfair police practices, ignored and coerced by their overworked defense attorney and shamed by judges. Moreover, I show how court officials often silence poor people of color who strive to learn their legal rights and prove their innocence.

What reforms are needed to correct the current disparities in the court system?

So many reforms are needed: police accountability, judicial intervention, reducing prosecutorial power and increasing resources for public defenders are places we can start. But beyond piecemeal reforms, we need to continue having critical conversations about transformation and the role of the courts in bringing about the abolition of police and prisons. When I speak of abolition, Im referring to the ideas and work of numerous activists and scholars including Angela Y. Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Dorothy Roberts. They have been advocating for moving toward a world where police and prisons are no longer part of the way we deal with social problems and social harms. Instead, we should be investing in health care, housing, education and food security.

Some organizations, such as the Center for Court Innovation in New York, are experimenting with peacemaking programs as an alternative to traditional criminal courts. Such programs rely on restorative justice principles to reach an agreement between a harmed party and the person who harmed them. We also could use the courts as a mechanism toward prison and police abolition. One way to do this would be for activists and elected officials to pressure the courts to change their institutional norms to lead the way in refusing to sentence people to prison and in contesting, rather than legitimating, unjust police practices.

The rest is here:

Race and mass criminalization in the US | Stanford News - Stanford University News

On Sunday, lawmakers in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota announced that they had been listening. As a result of sustained local, national, and international protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by Minneapolis police city council members told a community rally that they would seek to defund and abolish the Minneapolis Police Department.

The announcement is the most major in a cluster of measures being implemented across the US to take away funding from their police departments. Also on Sunday (the 7th of June), New York mayor Bill De Blasio pledged to divert funding from the NYPD and into social services, while last week, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti promised that $250 million would be taken from police budgets and funnelled into jobs, health and community initiatives. The mayor of Seattle, Jenny Durkan, has also committed to reviewing the citys police budget.

As more cities interrogate the role of the police in the US, many in the UK now ask what police defunding and eventual abolition might look like at home. Is it possible? What sort of community-based initiatives could we establish instead of policing? Would we see youth workers, counsellors, mental health professionals and drug case workers becoming first responders? And what would be the results of these changes?

To find out, we asked experts Richard Garside of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, University of Greenwich sociologist Dr. Adam Elliott-Cooper, and anti-racism campaigner, abolitionist and former Metropolitan police officer Adam Pugh, to take us through the hypothetical abolition of the London Metropolitan Police over the course of one, three and five years.

First of all, its important to provide some context against which police defunding in the UK would happen. In the early noughties, the Labour government threw money at police and what we saw was a massive expansion in the number of officers everywhere, including in London, Garside explains. After this, as part of the austerity measures, we saw a scaling back of these numbers. So, were in a situation where people in this country believe that we dont have that many police but were not short on them at all. There are more police now than there were during the miners strikes under Thatcher.

As far as what sort of defunding might happen in the period of one year, Dr. Elliott-Cooper explains that there are various areas within policing and the Met the largest police force in the UK which could be divested from and defunded immediately, many of which cause particular harm to Black and other minority ethnic communities.

The first should be the end of drugs policing and drugs stop and search, he tells me. Stop and search allows officers to question members of the public at random, with BAME people four times more likely than a white person to be stopped. It is, Elliott-Cooper says, a very police intensive exercise, does nothing in terms of improving public safety, and requires a huge amount of person power and human hours. The second one would be disbanding the Prevent agenda.

Prevent is a government counter-terror initiative which attempts to use schools, universities, workplaces, and other institutions to identify people who are at supposed risk of radicalisation, and which has been heavily criticised for its extreme use of surveillance, and, as Elliott-Cooper notes, has been used to criminalise lots of communities, the very high majority of whom are non-white. It also, he tells me, requires a huge amount of communications infrastructure, and its made very little difference to public safety.

Image by Alex Rorison

Thirdly, he continues, we should see an end to what David Cameron called the all-out war on gangs and gang culture. This policy, instigated following the 2011 London riots (themselves caused by the police killing of a Black man, Mark Duggan), uses a huge amount of surveillance, huge amounts of technology, IT and communications infrastructure, and its been used to criminalise mainly Black communities. And the fourth area which should be defunded immediately would be the hostile environment policy the way in which the police are raiding homes, workplaces, and institutions, just to try to find people who are undocumented and immigration deportations and detentions. They make no improvement on public safety, and are very resource intensive.

In this one year period, Dr. Elliott-Cooper tells me, the funds from these policing areas should be quickly redirected instead into womens refuges, youth services and greater funding for mental health provision, particularly for young people.

The real meat of defunding the police is in refunding the organisations and initiatives who should be doing work that is currently the part of the polices remit. Pugh, therefore, is keen to remind me that abolition is not simply about defunding the police, meaning that stripping away their budgets in isolation somehow will magically reduce police violence or crime. Neither is abolition the idea that we simply get rid of the police and all of the problems are solved. This is about making sure that instead of investing in punitive measures like policing and prisons, we invest in addressing the social conditions and social inequality that has created the response of policing. He highlights areas such as the NHS, housing and unemployment as those which are in drastic need of money and attention.

Garside gives a real world example to show the practicalities of a redistribution of funds: When Boris Johnson was the Mayor of London, he spent a lot of money on some fairly knackered water cannons from Germany. The Met didnt end up using them, of course, and when Sadiq Khan became Mayor, he committed to selling those cannons and investing the profits in youth services, he says. Im not sure whether that actually happened Im not sure who would have wanted to buy them but it illustrates fairly well what divesting money from the police and into public services looks like. (The water cannons were ultimately sold for scrap at a loss.)

For Elliott-Cooper, this means new, well-funded resources like mental health first-responders. We need to have properly trained mental health professionals that people can call if they see somebody having a mental health crisis. So that rather than the police being called, where the persons safety is put at risk, where the police arent trained, and theyre more likely to use violence towards that individual, particularly if theyre Black, we can have better trained mental health services for people in our communities.

Similarly, drug workers and experts might play a similar role, he explains. These would be people who are trained to work with people with addiction problems, and to help them to access clean needles, and the care they might need to stop using drugs in ways that mean that they or others can come to harm. That is far more effective than locking people up for taking drugs, which is basically our current policy.

Elliott-Cooper also suggests that we could see the reopening of youth centres over a three year period, as more funding would move from policing and into youth services. In London alone, over 100 youth clubs have closed since 2011, and we need to reopen those youth clubs. These buildings havent been demolished many of them are still there. Wed also need to rehire the approximately 3,500 youth workers whove lost their job since austerity was introduced. Theyre far better trained than police officers at conflict mediation and identifying young people at risk of being affected by violence or problematic drug use, and bring far less harm to the community, he says.

Photo by Alex Rorison

All of the experts I speak to remind me that police abolition is a very long term goal, which would necessitate other very structural changes. Elliott-Cooper notes that investment in council housing, public sector jobs and education, for example, is foundational to a society without policing.

Pugh agrees. He tells me, There is no quick fix solution. There can only be a long term strategy with regards to abolition or defunding the police as a strategy. So on this basis, it is unlikely that within five years time the police would not still exist, but hopefully we would be well on our way to the goal of them not existing, and would have seen money reinvested elsewhere. We hear about spending upwards of 500 million a year on 20,000 additional police officers not to mention a huge amount on things like tasers and body cams that we know do not and will not reduce crime or keep our communities safer.

Fundamentally, then, Pugh sees abolition as the only way forward. The point is that policing isnt working, and will never work I say that as somebody who has been a police officer. Reform hasnt been working for a long time, he tells me. We now need to move beyond reform and begin to reimagine what our entire justice system might look like, taking steps towards the actualisation of that goal.

Read more:

What Might Happen If Police in the UK Were Defunded - VICE

It also gives a link to the Sheffield Libraries study guide on the issue with resources to find out more.

In the 1750s, Benjamin Spencer of Cannon Hall, Barnsley was involved in the slave trade in Antigua and the USA.

In 1789, amid all the political upheaval here created by excitement at the news of the French Revolution, 769 Sheffield metalworkers petitioned Parliament against the slave trade, the guide says.

A year later, the African slave Olaudah Equiano, who had managed to buy his freedom, made the first of his visits to Sheffield to talk about his life as part of a public speaking tour.

He had documented in an autobiography that helped to boost the abolitionist cause.

Four years later, another petition from the city contained 10 times as many names.

A famous campaigner against slavery was Mary Anne Rawson. She was born in 1801 at Green Lane, Sheffield into a committed non-conformist religious family.

Mary Anne married William Bacon Rawson in February 1828, but found herself a widow with a small child only 18 months later.

Mary became actively involved in a number of philanthropic campaigns she argued to create improved conditions for chimney sweep boys and better education for the poor.

Her parents, who encouraged their children in good works of all kinds, had set up a school and Sunday school in the grounds of their home at Wincobank Hall and Mary Anne formed a trust to ensure its survival.

Her charity still supports Wincobank School and the Friends of Upper Wincobank Chapel work hard to make sure that Mary Annes legacy continues to be remembered.

She was actively involved in the abolition movement at a national level, and continued to campaign for complete freedom after 1833, when slavery was formally abolished in the British Empire.

The guide says that in 1837 she formed the Sheffield Ladies Association for the Universal Abolition of Slavery.

Three years later, she attended the International Convention for the Universal Abolition of Slavery.

She was still campaigning for the rights of fugitive slaves as late as 1875.

Sheffield Quaker Hannah Kilham went to work in West Africa as a teacher and her memoirs give a vivid account of what she saw.

Excerpt from:

Sheffield Archives reveal history of city links to slavery and fight to abolish it - The Star

Last week, the New York State Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers posted a graphic on Facebook that read, Social workers belong in police departments.

The accompanying post suggested that if more social workers were hired, we could provide crisis intervention, referrals to human service and other agencies, short-term counseling, follow-up services, mediation and other services. At publication time, the post had been shared over 1,600 times, received over 950 reaction emojis (all positive), and garnered 135 comments. The large majority of comments were generally in agreement with the sentiment that, yes, police departments do need more social workers.

I was deeply troubled, both because the statement itself is so clearly off-base, but also because the responses to it reveal so much about the broader challenges plaguing our profession.

This strategy will not fundamentally change even one of the myriad harms inflicted.

The statement feels especially offensive and problematic in this current moment. For the past several weeks, protesters and activists around the world have been rising up to denounce racist police brutality and demand systemic change (including making calls for the abolition of policing itself). This month also marks the fifty-first anniversary of Stonewall, a riot led by Black and Latinx trans women in response to ongoing targeting and abuse at the hands of police. So little has changed over half a century later, as we witness all-too-frequent incidences of police violence towards Black cis and trans women with no justice, nor even equal recognition or outcry as when victims are Black men.

The suggestion that social workers should join precincts denies the reality that this strategy will not fundamentally change even one of the myriad harms inflicted, on the very communities we claim to serve, by police. There is little evidence that our presence will reduce their disproportionate use of lethal force against Black, Latinx and Indigenous people; it will not prevent them from patrolling certain communities over others while serving the interests of gentrifiers; it will not demilitarize them; and it will not hold them accountable for misconduct or abuse.

If anything, our alignment with policing would exacerbate our professions already fraught role as agents of social control. It would make us even more complicit with yet another systemin addition to prisons and jails, other forms of correctional control like probation, or so-called Child Protective Servicesthat victimizes our societys most marginalized.

Social workers say we want to end discrimination and injustice. But as a profession, we have not taken a clear stance on the harms of policing, incarceration and criminalizationharms that disproportionately impact communities of color and promote health, social and economic inequities. This is in embarrassingly stark contrast with the allied profession of public health, whose flagship journal, the American Journal of Public Health, dedicated an entire special issue to documenting and addressing the health impacts of carceral systems, including policing, just a few months ago.

What new policies and community systems are needed for social workers to no longer be necessary?

At a time when communities are imagining a world without policing and, in many cases have begun to build their own non-carceral community systems of support and accountability, we should be asking ourselves this: What would it take to work ourselves out of a job, rather than further entrenching ourselves in the harmful status quo of a violent system?

Despite the challenging nature of this exercise, social workers should stop imagining new settings in which to work, and instead consider what it would take to create a world where our profession is rendered obsolete. What new policies and community systems are needed for social workers to no longer be necessary?

So much of the work that many of us do at the individual or programmatic level is often to mitigate and navigate larger policy and systemic failures. Not enough of us are even equipped to engage in making these changes, since community organizing and policy practice courses at the Baccalaureate, masters and doctoral levels are rare and often have less enrollment than clinical courses.

Our Code of Ethics states that our professions mission includes promoting social justice and ending oppression, but much of our advocacy agenda involves reimbursement parity and improving our own employment conditions.

As Mariame Kaba, the abolitionist organizer and writer, has said: You cant just focus on what you dont want, you have to focus also on what you do want. The world you want to live in is also a positive project of creating new things.

Social work as a profession must engage in a reckoning of its own: What kind of world do we truly want, and what new things could and should we help to create? Because we do have options beyond remaining either passive bystanders or willing accomplices to the carceral state.

The authors employer, the Drug Policy Alliance, has previously provided a restricted grant to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, to support a Drug War Journalism Diversity Fellowship.

Photo of the NYPD 78th Precinct building in Brooklyn by Autopilot via Wikimedia Commons

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Social Workers Belong in Police Departments Is an Offensive Statement - Filter

A number of Cumbrians played a role in the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade, new research has highlighted.

Research from University College London's Legacies of British Slave-ownership centre has identified thousands of slave owners who received a share of the 20m in compensation from the UK Government following the abolition of slavery throughout the majority of the British Empire in 1833.

In a bid to make this moment in history more accessible, the UCL centre has put together a map which shows where dozens of Cumbrian slave owners and traders lived when they were awarded compensation for slavery having been made illegal.

This research helps to remind Cumbrian residents that the slave trade was never a far-off, foreign experience, but something that is interwoven into the county's history, said Mohammed Dhalech from community development group AWAZ Cumbria.

"A lot of local people don't know that whole history, and the connections between that time and what you see around you today," Mr Dhalech said.

He said that our changing understanding of history helps us better understand who we are as a community today.

This applies to both the aspects of our history to be celebrated and condemned.

One positive example Mr Dhalech used is the stories of John Kent, who had been forgotten until research uncovered just a few years ago that he was Britain's first black policeman.

Another example he pointed to was the 3rd century garrison at Burgh-by-Sands on the western edge of Hadrian's Wall the first recorded African community to live in Britain.

"Our history doesn't teach us this, Mr Dhalech said.

"It doesn't matter whether you're black or white, you're not taught that at school. Parents are therefore teaching this history to their children, if they know what that local history is, and they know what the role, say, Whitehaven played in the slave trade.

"Otherwise, it remains hidden."

Mr Dhalech said that the only way to ensure this new, deeper understanding of what it means to be Cumbrian comes into play is by actively encouraging more education on the subject.

"Unless you push people to address this issue, it never gets addressed," he said. "That history is still there. There are buildings in Cumbria that were built with the profits of the slave trade.

"We can go some way towards addressing this sort of thing with Black History Month, but Black History Month should be a 12-month programme."

Mr Dhalech added that teachers had a role to play in "decolonising the curriculum", but that he recognised many teachers may not feel able to stray too far from the established roster of topics to be taught.

"Unfortunately teachers I think sometimes lack the confidence to do this, or perhaps feel they cannot go beyond the curriculum they have to work with," he said.

"But it's also about getting different communities involved, and encouraging them to help contribute to that."

Mr Dhalech said this is one of the things that AWAZ Cumbria is working to make happen, by organising visits and talks in schools to help encourage exposure to a wider range of voices.

"By focusing on the history of Cumbria's involvement in the slave trade, or by celebrating Carlisle as having had the first black policeman, we help to reinforce that the experiences of black and minority ethnic people have never been restricted just to London, or to Birmingham or Bristol," Mr Dhalech said.

"Cumbria's had a role to play in that as well.

"People can get an understanding of Cumbria, they can get an understanding that a lot of the buildings have been built off the back of the slave trade.

"It's not that it's something that we've lost, it's that people are not remembering it."

Most crucially, Mr Dhalech said that truly recognising this helps to ensure there is a wider understanding that "everybody's had a role to play in what's happening now", with members from ethnic minority communities across Cumbria and beyond building on the demonstrations taking place in the USA over the death of George Floyd to highlight the isolation and abuse that they feel and experience in the UK today.

Mr Dhalech said that resources like the research put together by UCL helps to more effectively counter the "online trolls" who seek to minimize or outright deny Britain's role in the slave trade, and the ensuing legacy that has left in British society.

"Things like this map helps provide an answer to the online trolls who might say that it didn't happen. It did happen, so let's talk about it," he said.

A map highlighting the figures and properties associated with the slave trade in Cumbria can be found here.

See the rest here:

New research highlights lasting legacy of Cumbria's role in the slave trade - News & Star

Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, was accustomed to individuals waiting to invade the executive mansion on a daily basis. They came seeking favors for themselves or others.

But on this Saturday Oct. 29, 1864 it would be a different day. The shop, as Lincoln liked to call this public gathering, was to have a remarkable visitor. She was coming to see the nations leader for a different reason than the thousands of other visitors in the past four years.

The visitor was Isabella Baumfree, who on June 1, 1843, changed her name to Sojourner Truth and became the most famous African American woman in the 19th century.

She was born in 1797, a New York slave for 30 years, sold three times and escaped once before she was emancipated by the state in 1826. She was illiterate but gained fame as an itinerant minister and outspoken advocate for the abolitionist cause and womens rights.

Truth might have faded from the pages of history, but she had a knack for pursuing a cause until it became a cause celebre. In 1828, she became the first black woman to take a white man to court in the state of New York and win.

In the mid-1830s, she lived and worked with a religious cult that imploded over charges of sexual promiscuity and murder. Truth was falsely accused of trying to poison several individuals. To clear her name, she was back in court suing for slander and won damages for a total of $125.

A practicing born again New York City Methodist, Truth made her way to Massachusetts where she mingled with other social reformers and anti-slavery activists. Preaching at prayer meetings in exchange for food and shelter, her heartfelt testimony about her religious faith and her life in bondage captured congregations. Her fame increased with the publication of an autobiography in 1850.

Truth, a 6-foot tall rangy woman of 54 years, who spoke forcefully and with conviction, became a legendary individual at the Akron Womens Convention in 1851.

When a man spoke of the physical weakness of women, she rose to speak, holding the convention spellbound with the refrain: I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could lead me and aint I am a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man when I could get it and bear the lash as well!

Newspapers throughout the country printed the Aint I a Woman speech which struck a chord with white as well as black and made her the best-known black woman in the nation.

Truth enjoyed additional notoriety in 1863 when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly about the black reformer. During the Civil War, she was active in aiding the enlistment of black men into the Union Army and visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals. Her grandson was in the 54th Massachusetts, the most famous of the black regiments.

Despite all that she had experienced, Sojourner was an almost reverent supporter of Lincoln. It was less than a week before the 1864 national election when she and Mrs. Lucy Coleman, a white abolitionist friend, came to see the president at the shop.

Upon entering the reception room at about 8 a.m., the two found 12 other individuals waiting. One by one, Lincoln listened to their conversation and in his usual kindness and attentiveness offered each individual help or suggestions to accommodate their request.

When Lincoln turned his attention to Sojourner, Mrs. Coleman said: This is Sojourner Truth who has wanted to meet you.

Lincoln the 6-foot-4-inch giant, stood up, made a bow and said: I am pleased to see you. I have heard of you many times.

Before Lincoln could inquire the reason for her visit, Truth remarked, Mr. President, when you first took your seat, I feared you would be torn to pieces like Daniel in the den of lions. Then, if the lions did not tear you into pieces, I knew God would save you and has done so and now I am here to see for myself.

Truth then thanked Lincoln for being the savior of the nations blacks when he issued, by executive order Jan. 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation. She continued by asking him to get the 13th Amendment to the Constitution passed during his next four years. In her final remarks, she told him about her work.

Finally in an almost hesitant voice she asked if he would sign her autograph book which contained the signatures of many famous people. Lincolns signature was the one she desired the most. Lincoln took the little book and with the same hand that had signed the death warrant on slavery, he wrote, for Aunty Sojourner Truth Oct. 29, 1864 A. Lincoln.

As she was leaving, Lincoln rose and took her hand and said, I would be pleased to have you call again.

Truth thanked him again for his advocacy of the abolition of slavery, tucked her autography book under her arm and left the presence of the gentleman who had treated her with the utmost kindness and cordiality.

After the Civil War, Truth crisscrossed the country aiding the distribution of western lands to former slaves. In her public speaking, she pleaded for economic justice and greater educational opportunities for women and the freed slaves.

And always she invited her visitors to sign her little book by asking the question, dont you want to write your name in de Book of Life?

Sojourner Truth knew what it was like to be sold at a slave auction, to be whipped to labor, to work endless hours as a field hand, to become a preacher and an activist for womens rights and to hold conductors at bay on city streetcars. She lived long enough to see slavery abolished and died at 86, Oct. 26, 1883, in Battle Creek, Michigan.

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When Lincoln was thanked by Sojourner Truth - Farm and Dairy

The wave of anti-police brutality protests that swept the US in the wake of George Floyds killing by Minneapolis police has led to a massive cultural shift in favor of police reform. The Minneapolis city council has since announced its intent to dismantle the citys police force and rebuild something new in its wake. Even National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell has admitted that he was wrong when not listening to players like Colin Kaepernick, who called attention to police brutality by kneeling during the pre-game singing of the national anthem.

But no reform can happen without demolishing the police unions that often serve as the biggest obstacle to accountability.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

In Florida, a 2019 University of Chicago study found that police unionization resulted in a 40 percent increase in violent misconduct incidents among county sheriffs offices between 1996 and 2015. Researchers noted that terms in collective bargaining agreements hindered the imposition of discipline on problematic officers, and organized police union muscle successfully opposed police reform efforts in the state legislature. But the problematic nature of police unions stretches far beyond one state.

With more than 16,000 police departments throughout the US, its difficult to determine what percentage of officers are unionized. But according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), approximately three-quarters of all municipal police departments were unionized as of 2006, and that rate is likely much higher now, according to a 2018 Bloomberg report. Just as with the University of Chicago study, the BJS noted that rate of force complaints were higher than [police departments] not authorizing collective bargaining by a rate of 53 complaints for unionized police departments to 23 for non-union police departments.

Even the US Department of Justice admitted in a 2012 memo that bureaucratic roadblocks put in place by the Portland Police Bureaus (PPB) union contract largely prevented officers from being held accountable, despite the DOJ finding a pattern or practice of unnecessary and unreasonable use of force in analyzing officers interactions with residents who have mental illness. One section of the PPBs collective bargaining agreement stipulates that officers cant be questioned about shooting a citizen until a 48-hour window has passed. The DOJ memo wryly notes that it is difficult to conceive the police extending that same 48-hour window to a citizen involved in a shooting.

A more recent example of toxic police union culture can be seen in Philadelphia, in which Inspector Joseph Bologna was recently seen in a viral video beating a peaceful student protester in the back of the head with a baton and was subsequently charged with felony aggravated assault. John McNesby Bolognas union president called the charges a slap in the face to every police officer in the city of Philadelphia. Another video of Bologna turning himself in on Monday shows him surrounded by his colleagues who are all cheering him on as he walks out of his union lodge.

In most workplaces, any incompetent employees who do their job poorly or bring public shame to their employer are typically fired. If a worker is part of a union, the worker may be able to file an appeal to challenge their dismissal. But police unions go above and beyond in their efforts to keep violent and incompetent police officers on the payroll. A 2017 Washington Post investigation found that since 2006, the largest municipal police departments fired 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed the publics trust. However, nearly a quarter of those officers were later rehired thanks to rigorous appeals processes outlined in their union contracts.

As a socialist, I normally defend the existence of unions in the workplace as a way of giving workers a collective voice when negotiating for better pay and working conditions. Throughout history, unions have often proved necessary when large, powerful corporate employers seek to squeeze their labor force and hoard the profits for themselves. But when it comes to the particular case of police unions, I cant help but agree with my libertarian co-author that they protect violent and incompetent police officers and make it exceedingly difficult to hold problematic officers accountable.

Any concern over whether or not police officers are workers who deserve the protection of unions can be dismissed when examining how little solidarity police unions have with other workers organizing for better wages and dignity in the workplace. Unlike other unionized professions, police have served as reliable strike-breakers for more than a century. According to the Police Studies department at Eastern Kentucky University (the first accredited law enforcement academy in the United States), police strike-breaking was either done by extreme violence or by trivial public order offenses, in which union organizers and protest leaders were detained and jailed under vaguely written ordinances like vagrancy. Ever since the days of slave patrols, police have been agents of the bosses to protect their private property, even if it means killing and maiming their fellow workers.

For some activists, police reform may look like the proposed abolition of police altogether, like whats happening in Minneapolis. For others, it may be a defunding of police departments and redistributing that money toward sustainable city planning, mental health counseling, public education, and other underfunded programs. But however one may envision it, police reform wont happen until mayors, city councils, state legislatures, and governors show toughness in this critical moment and work together to bust police unions for good.

Carl Gibson is a freelance journalis. Follow him on Twitter @crgibs

Kevin Ryan is the founder of Unbiased America

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To prevent another George Floyd case, we need to get rid of police unions - The Independent

The barbarous and cruel treatment of slaves, described by Mary Prince from her own experience, greatly helped the campaign for abolition.

She was working as a charwoman at 4 Keppel Street (opposite Store Street) in 1829 after fleeing her slave owner John Wood (1783-1836) of Leigh Street, Bloomsbury. Wood resolutely refused to grant her release to enable her to return to her husband in Antigua.

A petition was presented to parliament on her behalf in the same year but, after he falsely promised to help her, the petition was allowed to lie on the table, and she was never able to return to her husband.

Her life story was published in 1831 and exposed the horrors of slavery (the 2004 Penguin Classics edition of the book The History of Mary Prince is still in print).

She was born a slave in Bermuda in 1788, and at the age of 12 was separated from her mother and sisters to be sold like cattle to a new owner. She was frequently stripped naked, hung by the wrists and whipped until her flesh was opened up for the slightest offence. A pregnant slave whom she knew was tied to a tree and flogged until streaming with blood for allowing a cow to slip its rope. The slave had a miscarriage, then her body swelled, water burst out of her body and she died.

An old slave called Daniel had become lame in the hip so was slower at shovelling salt. He was stripped, whipped with a rod of rough briar until his skin was raw, then had a bucket of salt flung into the raw flesh as he writhed and screamed in agony. His wounds never healed and became full of maggots. Another old and infirm woman did not wheel her barrow fast enough so was severely beaten and flung into a cactus bush, causing her to die a few days later after her body swelled and festered.

Mary was forced to work in salt ponds, immersed in brine, causing blisters and boils which ate into her bones for long hours in scorching heat surrounded by mosquitoes. The master also sexually abused her so she was pleased when he sold her to John Wood who took her to Antigua.

By then Mary was lame from untreated rheumatism but was forced by Wood and his wife to work long hours and was frequently whipped with a cat-o-nine-tails without justification. Once she was flogged in a cage for an argument over ownership of a pig, despite a magistrate later ruling in her favour.

When she married a carpenter called Daniel James, her masters wife was so enraged that she got her husband to horsewhip Mary. Mrs Wood said she would not allow a nigger man on her premises or allow his clothes to be washed in the same tub as hers. Eventually they allowed him to live in their yard.

In 1828 they moved to London and took Mary with her. The law at the time meant slaves became technically free when in England, but slaves again on their return to the colonies unless released by their masters. On the voyage Mrs Wood warned Mary that she would continue to treat her as a slave.

When they arrived in London Marys rheumatism seized her limbs swelling her body. A doctor said doing washing work would make her worse. Despite this Mrs Wood forced her to do even more washing, including heavy loads such as mattresses and bed clothes, and all for no payment. When she complained the couple threatened to throw her out, knowing she would have difficulty finding another home or job. On the fourth time they did this she took them at their word and left, going to the Wesleyan Missionary Society and the Anti Slavery Society for help.

They had her medically examined and found the whole of the back part of her body is distinctly scarred, and, as it were, chequered, with the vestiges of severe floggings. Besides this, there are many large scars on other parts of her person, exhibiting an appearance as if the flesh has been deeply cut, or lacerated with gashes, by some instrument wielded by most unmerciful hands.

She managed to get living-in work as a charwoman for Mrs Forsyth in Keppel Street, who treated her humanely and gave her a good reference.

The Anti-Slavery Society offered money to John Wood to release Mary so that she could return to her husband in Antigua without becoming enslaved again. Not only did he refuse but he ordered the eviction of her husband, and informed him falsely that Mary had taken up with another man.

Another former slave, Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) wrote of his sufferings, which paved the way for abolition, while living at 73 Riding House Street, where he is commemorated by a green plaque.

When the slave trade in Britain was finally abolished in stages from 1833 it was not the slaves who received compensation for past mistreatment (indeed they continued as unpaid labour until 1838), but the slave owners who were generously recompensed for loss of their property.

Several of these lived in and around Fitzrovia.

Louisa Maltby (1769-1841) of 23 Charlotte Street, for instance, received two payments of 3,333 and 1,686 in 1836 for her 273 slaves in Grenada. Earlier she had lived at 44 Charlotte Street from 1819 to 1829 with her husband Rowland (who had been an agent for a mistress of the Duke of York during a royal scandal in 1809).

Eliza Parker (1775-1858) of 36 Portland Place (by the corner of New Cavendish Street) owned a large slave plantation in Jamaica and had an 18-year-old youth hanged for stealing a teapot from her in Portland Place in 1824. She later moved to 6 Albany Terrace, Marylebone Road (opposite where Great Portland Street station now is).

George Pennant (1760-1840) of 56 Portland Place was paid 15,000 in 1835 for 764 slaves in Jamaica. He also inherited Penrhyn Castle in North Wales.

But the biggest beneficiary was George Hibbert (1757-1837), also of Portland Place, who received 38,603 (a massive fortune in those days) for his 1,618 slaves in Jamaica. His mansion in Portland Place housed his 14 children, and his collection of priceless books (such as a bible signed by Martin Luther) and paintings (including Rembrandt, Rubens, and Leonardo da Vinci).

When University College London was founded in Gower Street in 1828 two of its founders were prominent campaigners for the abolition of slavery Henry Brougham (1778-1868), a Whig MP, and Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838), who had seen the horrific violence of slavery when an assistant manager on a plantation in Jamaica. There is a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey, depicting a kneeling slave with the motto: Am I not a Man and Brother? Irked by them the slave owners financed the setting up of a rival college, the Anglican Kings College.

Much of the information for this article came from an exhibition on The Slave Owners of Bloomsbury which was shown at UCL. This article was originally published in the September 2012 print issue of Fitzrovia News (FN126).

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The barbarous treatment of slaves was for the benefit of local gentry - Fitzrovia News

For several days, given the number of black bodies affected by this pandemic, it is time to refocus on the political process of reparations because without this passage through the rehabilitation of Africans and Afro-descendants, by their epistemological recognition, the sense of humanity will not change. It will remain as it : violent, liar, manipulated by dominant that ignore the lives of the poorest and the most vulnerable as well as that of the migrants, abandoned at the gates of Europe under the fire of Turkish or Greek bullets.

This pandemic confirms what we denounce from year to year: the consequences of enslavement, colonization and colonialism are visible in the bodies of our black brothers and sisters. And yet, even if admitted, their lives have never changed. Still faced with precarious jobs, which they had to accept in the aftermath of abolition from which they were never able to escape, they have no choice but to live in peripheral areas and are deprived, most of the of time, of all their fundamental rights. The State, in a colonial perception of their bodies, continues to not see them and to ignore them.

The way in which the western states have handled this pandemic and the silence which surrounded the death of a large number of damned Afro-descendants, Africans, Arabs, natives, Aboriginals show that the coloniality of power can only consider these people as Non-Beings.

Of course, there will always be experts claiming that if black people are more affected by the coronavirus, it is because they live in unsustainable socio-economic conditions. This is not false, but they will take care not to offer a dynamic analysis specifying that the status of Non-Beings which is attributed to them dates back to the time when science and church decided that they had no soul, which de facto stripped them of all humanity and condemned them to a life of misery and invisibility. No matter the abolition, the moralizing texts, the analyzes denouncing racism, no matter the resolutions, the international conferences against racism. Nothing works. In the global collective unconscious is deeply encysted the certainty that Black is worth less than White which is the only standard-bearer of Euro-centered Modernity. Blacks only have to accept this subjugation.

If we know how the enslaved were treated, out of all rights, the inhuman treatment of which they were victims not crossing the fences of the plantation, then we see, in the treatment of exclusion which strikes those confronted with the violence of a State which ignores their rights, the continuity of the ideology of the white supremacy which prefers that the precariousness of the damned only very rarely cross the borders of the peripheral districts.

This health crisis has further weakened them since it has led to a production crisis; they found themselves without work, a decision taken by States which put them out of work or better by States which decided on a general strike at an almost global level, which had never been seen; these same States fiercely fight this form of resistance the main weapon of the worker, the precarious and the migrant.

We have also seen how the black body is apprehended when a French doctor, even if he claims to have been misunderstood, proposed that the vaccines be tested in Africa for the good of humanity. Dehumanized, desacralized bodies; with this outrageous proposal, they would have become cobbayes. It is indeed the same paradigm of domination ; black bodies do not count only if they benefit to white domination. We can even say that Black is dispossessed of his body.

They die in dizzying numbers in Brazilian favelas, in certain North American or European peripheral cities, whether during the pandemic or in normal times. Any period is dangerous for the black human.

Who cares? who makes their voice heard? No one on the side of the international community when we are at the midterm of the International Decade for People of African Descent. No one on the side of the States where they die alone, often thrown into a mass grave like their ancestors were. Only a few organizations are trying to break this wall of silence, a new border installed between the communities.

A black jogger is killed by two Whites in Brunswick, it will take more than 3 weeks for the arrest of the two murderers. Imagine the reaction of the police if a white jogger had been killed by two Blacks.

Black bodies dont count, stop believing otherwise. This belief is part of the long time that separates us from the transatlantic trade slave, enslavement, colonization and colonialism. It is our responsibility not to bury this reality, to let it emerge in the minds of everyone, including those who are mistaken in thinking that they are saved for having crossed the first or second layer of the glass ceiling. As long as it has not completely broken out for all, then our political struggle against the structural racism inherent in the white, liberal and domineering capitalist system cannot be satisfied with a half-victory.

Tomorrow, there will be other Trayvon, other Mohamed, other young Afro-Brazilians (more than 1,900 in 2019), and many more killed due to police violence, other young disabled people in life or incarcerated; other voices will be raised against these crimes and which, after being praised, have become inaudible while silence stifles the life of our brothers and sisters alone in the face of this structural and systemic racism which crushes and carries them away.

Perhaps even more so now, it is urgent to refocus on the political process of reparations from a decolonial perspective. There is an urgency in the face of the individualist or even strictly liberal way in which States have behaved, including between States on the same continent.

This movement for decolonial reparations must lead to the introduction of a rupture carried by all Africans and Afro-descendants in order to force the Western white world to reconsider the standards imposed to the detriment of a right to a human humanity where the humans matter more than capitalist profits and the systematic plunder of natural resources and brains.

We have no other choice but to work for the construction of a decolonial international whose cornerstone must be the reparations. Let us not get bogged down in moral postures aimed at artificial resilience. Take back control of our governments which, after forcing us to live in a state of emergency on the pretext of fighting terrorism, are tempted to add another for sanitary reasons. Let us not let the state of emergency become our horizon; in this context, the decolonial process of reparations has an important role to play because it is above all about the anagnorisis (recognition) of human identity and the dignity of black bodies whether in Africa or in the diaspora.

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Black bodies, death and Reparations - CADTM.org

One of the best rules of thumb to emerge from systems theory is Stafford Beers famous statement: the purpose of a system is what it does. It doesnt matter what the designer intended, or what the individual participants think theyre doing; the end result is all that matters. Its a useful thing to bear in mind when we consider the objectives of the Black Lives Matter protesters, because right now the movement is beginning to look an awful lot like a machine for the abolition of police departments.

It is frankly dizzying how rapidly the aims of the movement seem to have shifted from reform to destruction. Democratic politicians including Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling for the defunding and abolition of police departments, while Minneapolis following the ritual shaming of a mayor who had the temerity to support the idea that enforcing laws is useful has gone a step further in announcing the impending destruction of the force that killed George Floyd. In the online activist ecosystem, left-wing websites make the case for a world without cops, while tweets demanding the same rack up tens of thousands of shares.

Quite what happens after the police are abolished, however, is less clear. Some activists employ a curious motte-and-bailey argument, telling us that abolish the police doesnt mean abolish the police, and maybe to them it doesnt; that doesnt change the fact that it certainly does to some of their comrades-in-arms and the people making decisions, and generally when people tell us what they are its best to take them at face value.

Arguments for abolition seem to rest on two arguments. The first is that the police are not particularly effective; nice neighborhoods enjoy low crime rates with low police presences, and anyway crime still exists so the police arent preventing it. Q.E.D. The second is that crime is the result of unmet needs; remove funding from police forces and put them into community facilities treatment for drug users, provision of social workers, cash payments, and jobs to keep people fed, housed, and off the street and there would be no crime left for police to prevent. If we could just get rid of cops, crime will naturally follow.

But what if we actually did it? What if we achieved the impossible and abolished the police for good? What would happen? Well, its simple: the end result would be the further immiseration of the minority communities these protesters claim to value.

The idea that policing offers nothing in the way of crime prevention is based on a set of statistical misunderstandings; areas with high crime tend to have more police precisely because they are areas with high crime. The intuition is laid out nicely in the joke about Russian czar and the plague doctors. The ruler is looking at a map of his country, marked for plague outbreaks, and at the number of doctors in each province when suddenly the great man thumps his fist on the table. God damn them! he says, these doctors are worse than useless wherever they show up, the people are sicker!

To show the actual relationship between policing and in particular cops on the beat and crime we need to be a bit subtler. Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) used variation in the number of police officers caused by electoral cycles if youre up for re-election, you want to be able to brag about your new hires to show that each new officer hired would eliminate ~8-10 serious crimes per year. In the UK, academics showed that higher numbers of officers dont just reduce crime, they also increase the share of crimes reported to the police a confounding effect that would make a simple comparison across regions inaccurate. On a neighborhood level, papers using the reallocation of police across areas in response to perceived terror threats to look at what happens when more cops are on the beat and unsurprisingly, they find that crime falls.

But this, of course, is under the present theory of policing, where people have unmet needs. If we simply met them, the argument goes, the relationship between police numbers and crime would fall apart. Well, maybe. But I suspect anyone with some basic understanding of human nature can spot the difference between unmet needs and unmet wants, and knows that for some members of the population the point of theft, violence, or rape is not so much what is obtained as the sense of power over a victim; the idea that some people are simply bad may be out of fashion, but that doesnt make it untrue.

And none of this, of course, has considered the likely responses of the victims of crime. We already know that private individuals and groups are willing to spend substantial sums of money on private security. In a world without police and with higher crime rates these sums are likely to increase. It is not inconceivable that the end result of abolishing police forces would be a network of private security firms, accountable only to their employers, and protecting only those areas they are hired to protect.

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This might work out quite nicely for the well-heeled; a private force with no obligation towards outsiders; just like policing, private security reduces crime. But when poorer communities are unable to match this provision, criminal activity is likely to be diverted towards these softer targets, with a consequential effect on local behavior: if the state wont uphold your rights as a victim, and you cant afford for a private contractor to do it, then you must take it into your own hands. Vigilante justice has historically tended to pop up where central law enforcement is weak. And in America, of course, the cheapest form of self-protection is the firearm. When crime-rates go up, so do gun sales; what do we think will happen when the police are removed from the picture entirely?

The short answer is that we dont know. We dont know how any of this would work in practice, because all of our evidence has been gathered in a world where the police do exist, flawed as they are, and where they do work to solve and fight crime. The economist Robert Lucas won the Nobel Prize for his observation that empirical evidence gathered under one set of policies cant necessarily be used to predict what happens when we change the rules of the game: just because no one has tried to rob a bank doesnt mean we can get rid of the guards.

But what we can say is that in a society where black people consistently earn less than others, are subjected to higher crime rates, and where prejudice is rampant, putting law enforcement into the hands of private individuals without public oversight is a recipe for further entrenching inequality rather than solving it.

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Abolish the police. Then what? - The Spectator USA