Most of this has already been said many, many times, and by more qualified people. Either in reaction to the killing of #AmirLocke, or in the past. But it bears repeating.
Police lie. When they cannot lie, they obfuscate. When they cannot obfuscate, they remain silent. This also applies to their elected champions, such as @MayorFrey.
Police kill. Whether it is the intention of the individual officer or not, police are trained and armed to use deadly force against civilians. They will do so, given the chance.
Police do not protect citizens. It is expressly not their job to protect you. The Supreme Court has said as much. If you think we need police to protect us, you have misunderstood what police are for.
Police are the civilian arm of state violence. They exist to enforce the social norms (as determined by those with power and codified in laws) on the general populace, using force.
Police enforce social norms of the powerful, and the power structures in the US are fundamentally racist. It follows, then, that policing at its very core functionality is systemically racist.
It's no mystery then that we keep seeing the police murder Black people in the United States. We have a system designed to violently enforce racist laws using deadly force.
Any reasonable person looking at these facts would recognize the only way to stop the bleeding is to get rid of the department doing the murder.
If you brought a report to the mayor saying that street cleaners were killing people routinely, we'd change how we clean the streets.
If you brought a report to the mayor saying that street cleaners were killing people routinely, we'd change how we clean the streets.
Politicians like @MayorFrey and CM @cmlisagoodman who get elected promising things like transparency and consequences, don't want real change. More importantly, they know that their wealthy donors don't want change either.
In the summer of 2020, in Minneapolis, we saw an unprecedented moment in Powderhorn Park when several elected officials stood on stage and said they would work to dismantle this deadly racist system.
But that moment didn't come because they wanted to be there (with possibly a few exceptions). And it didn't come because their donors wanted it either.
We saw those promises made because for weeks, this city burned. The only path forward that we left them, other than watching the chaos continue, was to stand with us.
We need to see the system of policing eradicated from our cities, states, and the entire country. We need to see it done so that people like #AmirLocke don't end up dead at the hands of the state.
It has become increasingly clear that the only way we're going to see it done is if we leave no room for any other option.
Justice won't come for Amir Locke, or any of the hundreds of names that came before him. You can't give justice to someone who has been murdered.
If we want justice for our community, we need abolition. And we need it now.
If we want justice for our community, we need abolition. And we need it now.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
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