I interviewed @equalityAlec about his work ending the criminalization of poverty, the history of policing and prisons, the real motives behind reforms like body cams, arguments against #DefundThePolice, what abolition really means, and...
What you can do in your own community:
"No society in recorded history of the modern world ever attempted to take so many human beings from the schools, and families, and jobs, and medical care, and children, and put them into government run cages" - @equalityAlec
"If they are determining who's in a jail cell, separated from their kids, and who's home with their family on the basis of how much money they have, how can we trust anything else they're doing?" - @equalityAlec
"That is the kind of evil we're dealing with... The intentional brutality these companies are inflicting"
"What's radical is the incredible amount of money we are currently spending"
I asked @equalityAlec what we should say when liberals tell us they agree with #DefundThePolice... but we need to change our language
"Are we ever going to get to a world where we can guarantee that every single person will be safe every single day? No, and that shouldn't be our goal, and the police are never going to get us to that goal in the first place" - @equalityAlec on arguments against abolition
"The number one rule in how we think about these systems is: is the particular reform that I'm being offered shrinking the size and power of the system? If it's not doing that, it's not worth supporting" - @equalityAlec
I spoke with @kamaufranklin, who co-founded @CommunityMvt after years with @MXGMNyc in NYC, about Cop City in Atlanta and what it means for liberation movements in the US and worldwide
“We’ve got to get to a place in our movement where we’re winning some of these struggles, but we can only have that when the lulls happen and we’re not falling apart”
@kamaufranklin “You will catch hell if you continue to work on this project. It will be the hardest work you’ve ever done” - @kamaufranklin to the city, corporations and developers behind Cop City
Want to #StopCopCity? Here’s what *you* can do — wherever you live
Across the country, police violence cases are settled USING TAXPAYER MONEY.
A March 22 @washingtonpost investigation confirmed $3.2+ billion spent in just 10 years to ‘resolve’ 40,000 claims at 25 of the US’s largest police and sheriff’s departments
The person seen on video getting his head smashed in by three cops in Arkansas?
*He* is facing charges of terroristic threatening, resisting arrest, 2nd-degree battery, trespassing, aggravated assault, and possession of an instrument of crime
The perpetrators? Still employed
If you’re confused, read this thread on wandering cops