Amidst COVID-19 related staffing shortages, police departments around the country have begun to relax some of their hiring standards to boost recruitment.
According to reporting by CNN, "after Chicago Police announced two weeks ago that the department would... 1/4
waive a college credit requirement for some recruits, 400 candidates applied that same day and the department has had continued spikes of applicants since then."
Higher standards, lower standards, or different standards—nothing will change the fact that...
2/4
policing at its core is irreparably violent and anti-Black. Changes to recruitment protocol and practice will not alter this truth.
In fact, conversations over "standards" often serve as a diversion and pivot from the powerful work
3/4
abolitionist organizers have been doing for years to build a future without cops. #AbolitionNow
On March 15, #JustinPeoples was shot once and stabbed multiple times at a Chevron gas station in Tracy, a town about 50 miles outside of #SanFrancisco.
1/5
According to reporting, "Christina Lyn Garner, 42, and Jeremy Wayne Jones, 49, were arraigned on murder charges [last] Friday with a special circumstance alleging the victim was intentionally killed because of his race, color, religion, nationality, or country of origin.
2/5
A third defendant, Christopher Dimenco, 58, was also arraigned on accessory charges."
Peoples leaves behind a 2-year-old and 11-year-old child, his father told CNN Tuesday, and one sister and four brothers along with extended family who are still processing their loss.
3/5
Earlier today, a jury acquitted Brett Hankison of all three counts of felony wanton endangerment in the March 2020 raid that killed Breonna Taylor. 1/4
According to reporting in CNN, "prosecutors called 26 witnesses over five days as they argued that Hankison shot blindly into a window from outside the apartment...
2/4
His gunfire went through Taylor's apartment and endangered a man, a pregnant woman, and her 5-year-old son who lived next door."
We wish we could say we're surprised by this verdict, but we're not. That's why we call for #AbolitionNow. The current system can't be reformed.
3/4
Today, we honor the late Trinidadian-born communist & feminist revolutionary, Claudia Jones (1915 - 1964).
Jones joined the Communist Party in the US (CPUSA) in 1936 and by the mid-1940s was the Negro Affairs Editor of The Daily Worker, the official publication of CPUSA.
1/5
Harassed by the U.S. government for close to 15 years, she was deported to Britain in 1955. Three years later, Jones founded and served as editor of the West Indian Gazette, a publication that played a key role in developing and sustaining the Caribbean diaspora in London.
2/5
Jones's organizing and community-building often served as the basis for her countless op-eds and articles challenging anti-Black racism across the Diaspora.
“Imperialism is the root cause of racialism,” she once wrote. 3/5
Yesterday, the U.S. House passed legislation that would classify lynching as a federal hate crime. The bill, named after #EmmettTill, passed on a 422-3 vote, with three Republicans — Reps. Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), and Chip Roy (Texas) — voting against it.
1/5
"The legislation's passage in the House comes more than 120 years after the first federal anti-lynching legislation was introduced by then-Rep. George Henry White, who was the only Black member of Congress at that time."
2/5
While we are pleased that Congress is finally acknowledging the terrorism of anti-Black lynchings of the 19th- and 20th-centuries, we know that "hate crime" legislation often serves to expand the reach of the carceral state. There is reason to be skeptical here.
3/5
We reject imperialism and imperialist occupation wherever and whenever it occurs. We equally reject the racism, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism that often attempts to legitimize it. 1/4
Like so many others, we're disturbed by Russia's military invasion of Ukraine and what constitutes the quickening of an ongoing humanitarian crisis. 2/4
We're further disturbed by reports that African people living in Ukraine—in specific— have been stopped from fleeing this crisis, both from the interior and often at the border. 3/4
Recently, the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls held a forum to call attention to missing Black women and girls called "Not My Girls."
“In 2020, nearly 100,000 Black women and girls were reported missing,”... 1/6
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, told forum attendees, citing data from the National Crime Information Center. “That means that Black women made up a little more than one-third of all missing women reported last year, which is far higher than the population we account for nationally.
2/6
However, we do not hear about these girls’ and women’s cases.”
While the numbers are shocking and problematic, presenters at the forum argued that they likely don’t paint the whole picture because Black women’s cases often go underreported.
3/6