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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
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24 Jan, 5 tweets, 2 min read
THREAD: A few more shocking things about Harvard University using students to test military counterinsurgency tactics on behalf of police brutalizing young people of color in Massachusetts. (1)
Note the language in the course solicitation: prof wants to take military lessons from Iraq/Afghanistan to "clean up" Black and Brown communities. This is the language of ethnic cleansing. (2)
This Harvard solicitation comes at a time when US cages Black people at 6 times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid and on behalf of one of the most notorious police depts where DOJ found massive civil rights violations perpetrated. (3) bostonglobe.com/2020/07/25/met…
Although not disclosed in the prof's solicitation, the attempt to co-opt free student labor appears to be linked to a for-profit company run by the professors' military "buddy" and state trooper. (4)
The data work in this area is not rigorous. The field is overrun with conflicts of interest, pro-police propagandists, and research that asks the wrong questions (mostly on purpose) because it is designed to normalize police budgets. I wrote all about it: currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-cr…

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More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
23 Jan
THREAD: @Harvard is offering a class where elite students can learn from ex-military about using "counterinsurgency methods" from Iraq and Afghanistan to "clean up" Black and Brown communities in Massachusetts. (1)
This is part of the hidden story about the complicity of elite universities in the horrors of US policing and immigration enforcement. (2)
Fancy professors, in conjunction with big corporations, have a cottage industry to transfer military tactics/surveillance/weapons made for colonial wars to more and more sophisticated forms of domestic enclosure. stoplapdspying.org/pt42-police-st… (3)
Read 7 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
22 Jan
THREAD: A few thoughts on basic things that many people don't know about the US legal system, which now cages Black people at six times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid. (1)
In many jails across the country, the windows are fake. It's more important for local government officials to see a nice building than it is for the human beings inside to get sunlight. (2)
Most jails do not let people visit or hug their loved ones. Why? To force them to spend $$$ at exorbitant rates to companies to whom jails gave monopoly telecom contracts in exchange for a cut of the profit. They monetized human contact. (3)
Read 10 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
21 Jan
THREAD: A federal court just affirmed a *9 year* prison sentence for a blind man in Los Angeles for failing to inform authorities supervising him "within five working days" that he had become homeless. (1)
Very few documents you'll ever read better capture the everyday cruelty of the mass incarceration bureaucracy. (2) cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/memo…
One of the banalities of evil we see every day: courts have concocted many ways to prevent themselves from doing justice. In this case, the court refused to even reach the question of whether it is constitutional to cage this man for 9 years. (3)
Read 10 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
21 Jan
THREAD on police and property: There are more vacant homes and luxury apartments in Los Angeles than houseless people. (1)
There is no city, county, or state where a person can afford a two-bedroom home while working 40 hours/week for the federal minimum wage. (2)
It is only possible to afford a one-bedroom home in 22 of 3,000+ counties while working a job making the federal minimum wage (3)
Read 7 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
18 Jan
THREAD: I've never spoken publicly about this: when presented with overwhelming evidence that judges had committed federal felonies, multiple Obama US Attorneys chose not to prosecute them because it would hurt the integrity of the legal system (1)
The crimes were among the most serious and violent crimes imaginable: judges using their offices to illegally cage Black people and separate them from their children to generate revenue from collecting debts. (2)
I'm not saying I would support prosecution--just that when US Attys wanted to meet with me and saw the *flagrant crimes* uncovered by our public lawsuits, they decided that they would instead devote their resources to prosecuting immigrants and poor people for drugs (3)
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
18 Jan
THREAD: This article is a prime example of the fraudulence of elite law school discourse and the dangers that elite people at elite institutions can pose to marginalized people when they whitewash history. (1)
The marketing of this article is trying to get you to think the evils of the DOJ are the b/c of Trump. We are told that we need a "cultural restoration." What does that mean? "Restore" what? Prior to Trump, DOJ was the largest force of racist human caging in world history. (2)
We are told that we must "insulate" DOJ from "political influence." What? Every fiber of DOJ history is about political influence. It was for political reasons that it targeted poor Black people for crack and ignored the crimes of bankers. Read history (3) yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
Read 8 tweets

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