Black Lives Matter- What Steps Can We Take?: Sunday's Anniversaries of Oppression

Every 28 hours, an African American is killed by police.

Sunday was worth marking for several reasons. For one, it made seventy years since a civilian population was last subjected to a nuclear attack- in 1945, some fifty thousand defenseless people were cruelly murdered in Nagasaki, and their deaths were weighing heavily on my mind.

For another, it was a year since the murder of Mike Brown and the emergence of the St. Louis resistance to police violence against People of Color.

As a white girl who has never braved the police even with the protections my identity affords me, guilt is obviously the first thing on my mind. I see an injustice- a massive pattern of injustices, and I've not risked anything trying to oppose it, even futilely. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough.

It's more productive to talk about those who are brave- the scores of comrades marching and sitting with Dr. Cornell West, after hearing his visionary speech Sunday night. He wove a masterful rendition of the need to address race and class oppression in the same movement, and it was amazing to hear him speak. The warmup speakers were great as well- focused a lot on whether or not the church could still be an ally of any progressive movement, particularly in bridging generation gaps within the Black community. I'm always troubled by overtures to ally with forces I regard as destructive, including Religion, but in this case I have to have a certain respect for the enemy of my enemy: the Black church wouldn't be the target of as much violence and repression as it is if it weren't something of a threat to parts of our racist system.

I went to the speech to listen and read- especially anything that might look like a legislative program that could be partially enacted at the state or local level. Most of us have heard a lot about two improvements- body camera surveillance of arrests and less weaponry for police departments which would certainly be an outstanding start towards ameliorating police violence against minority communities, but seem far short of the kind of comprehensive plan needed to begin checking centuries of racist practice and assumptions. The Ferguson PD, just to name one example, has returned to its old tricks of disproportionately targeting Black families with arbitrary fines and arrests, inflicting unemployment and violence on many. Body cameras won't fix all of that.

A pamphlet by a Civil Rights group called “Change is On Us” or “ONUS” - http://changeisonus.org/about/blog/ - was being distributed, with a 13 point program. Also, last Thursday, Bernie released his racial justice platform, and I wanted to plug both of these in some detail.

ONUS plan

#1-5- standardizes incident reporting across all American jurisdictions- every officer's reports will be in the same place which will also record patterns of which demographics the officer in question prefers to target, allowing instant transparency for every police officer in the country. This would document the patterns and make weeding out the most rotten apples a bit easier- we could see particular trouble spots and the most visible manifestations of the racist culture of policing.

#6- deputizes more attorneys, and gives them the power to initiate Civil Rights suits against law enforcement abuses.

#7- forever bars an officer fired for bias from working anywhere else in law enforcement, ending the revolving door we see in Balkanized municipalities like St. Louis where a high profile offender leaves his job and then gets another in a different municipality up the street.

#8- imposes burden to preserve life and prevent injury on arresting officers.

#9 gives the victim's family choice of investigators from a state-licensed team.

#10- empowers this investigator to present evidence directly to a grand jury- this bypasses the local County Prosecutors who are naturally close to the cops they're here asked to monitor or even prosecute.

#11- gives victims' families choice of prosecutor from a state-licensed list.

#12- provides for speedy removal of law enforcement agents deemed unfit.

#13- requires the Justice Department to create an office of Civilian Oversight and Accountability.

I must say I like the sound of it, and nearly all the proposals can be championed at the state or local level

Sanders' plan is significant as well- I love that from the getgo it starts on deescalation through community policing and demilitarization of police departments. The demilitarization can begin whenever the president wishes it, as he has generally has final discretionary authority over what weapons are sold out of the service. Community policing is a manyfold goal: draw officers from the community they will be policing and get them to maintain their involvement in the areas under their jurisdiction in gyms and community events and the like. Sanders also calls for a new federal standard in police training. His other plans include requiring public reporting of all police shootings and deaths in police custody, adjust training to incentivize non-lethal approaches, federal funding for body cameras, and pegging police department subsidies to reductions in disparities. Many of the positive steps here will require an act of Congress, but the Justice Department in particular has a great deal of regulatory authority at its disposal in these matters, and I trust Bernie to improve the situation with or without Congress.

What's also critical is the mass disenfranchisement of Voters of Color, and Sanders calls out the United States for allowing a patchwork system that often subjects African-Americans to 7 hour lines at polling stations in majority-minority communities, purges millions of voters from the rolls because of past or suspected felonies, universal voter registration and access to early voting.

Sanders' statement here really needs to be quoted in its entirety “If current trends continue, one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime. Blacks are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites and a report by the Department of Justice found that blacks were three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop, compared to white motorists. African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. This is an unspeakable tragedy.

Addressing Legal Violence

• We need to ban prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain, in order to keep prison beds full.
• We need to turn back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminate mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.
• We need to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that they do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.
• We need to boost investments for programs that help people who have gone to jail rebuild their lives with education and job training.”
  

Sanders goes on to hit his stride in talking about the directly economic side of racism, and points out that his antipoverty platform is particularly relevant to the struggle for equal rights.

“Addressing Economic Violence

• We need to give our children, regardless of their race or their income, a fair shot at attending college. That’s why all public universities should be made tuition free.
• We must invest $5.5 billion in a federally-funded youth employment program to employ young people of color who face disproportionately high unemployment rates.
• Knowing that black women earn 64 cents on the dollar compared to white men, we must pass federal legislation to establish pay equity for women.
• We must prevent employers from discriminating against applicants based on criminal history.
• We need to ensure access to quality affordable childcare for working families. “
  

I don't usually quote so heavily, but I was inspired to do so by my favorite news source (AlJazeera America) actually denying that it exists, I thought some direct quotes would be important.



I really hope the Sanders campaign can be a useful vehicle for these proposals- unfortunately the debates for the Democratic nomination don't start until October, and with everyone from MSNBC to Markos Moulitsas to Nate Silver trying their hardest to destroy Bernie, we've got a lot of work to do between now and then. I promise to keep up a steady stream of Sanders coverage here-



But we should never lose sight of the people who are being killed every day or those who are sacrificing their freedom to protest the killings. All across my native south and in much of the rest of the country, Black and Brown lives are systematically devalued. The proposals I've reposted here are something of a starting point as far as specific strategies are concerned.



It's still a bleak reality, and one that I as a white person, don't have to live with every day. That alone should be frightening



Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen.