Protests in Minneapolis Disrupted by Orange-Shirted “Collaborators” with Cops
A group calling themselves “violence interrupters” played a role in the October 7 arrest of 50 protesters demanding community control of police, said Jae Yates, of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar. “They are paid,” said Yates. “We know that this is a city council initiative.” During massive protests in June, members of the Minneapolis city council promised to disband the police force, but have since backed off that position. Yates says her group will “confront” the orange shirts and “tell them to leave” if they show up again at demonstrations.
Anti-Blackness Spread by Global Capital
The ideology of anti-Blackness is both a prerequisite to the rise of capitalism and a product of its spread around the world, said Adam Bledsoe, a professor of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota. “What we see today is very much a continuation of the colonial project,” said Bledsoe. Global capital ascribes “value to populations in a differential way,” with Black populations assigned the lowest value.
LGBTQ Newsletter Surveys Prison Conditions
The newsletter for the prison abolition organization Black and Pink sent out a 133-page questionnaire to incarcerated LGBTQ persons, earlier this year, so that “we can laser beam solutions to the needs of these individuals,” said organizer Fatima Shabazz, a trans woman. Among the findings of the questionnaire: 85 percent of respondents have spent time in solitary confinement, half of them for two years or more. Black and Pink claims 20,000 members in 13 chapters around the country.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Alabama Communists helped lay the foundation for the organized civil rights movement that emerged in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
Prison and police abolition were key to the thinking of many midcentury civil rights activists.
If there’s ever a time when a Reconstruction might actually lead to democratization and the end of American imperialism, this is the opportunity, says Robin D.G. Kelley.
Jackson, Mississippi’s Black mayor is celebrated as a “radical” in some quarters, but his cops kill, maim and abuse Black people just like police forces everywhere in the US.
Inequality: The American Ethos
