A new Netflix documentary, Power, examines why “Violence Is Part & Parcel” of U.S. Policing.
"The thing that police want to do more than anything else is contain & control threats to order,” says Ford.
What we still see in the U.S. & globally, from the Black Lives Matter movement to the campus Gaza solidarity movement, is “the use of police as small militaries whose job is to suppress dissent.”
A new Netflix documentary, Power, examines why “Violence Is Part & Parcel” of U.S. Policing.
"The thing that police want to do more than anything else is contain & control threats to order,” says Ford.
What we still see in the U.S. & globally, from the Black Lives Matter movement to the campus Gaza solidarity movement, is “the use of police as small militaries whose job is to suppress dissent.”
Going through my social media, it seems like Gaza doesn't even exist.
It's all about student protests and police brutality in US.
In the mean time, the stories of Maas Graves, mass execution of healthcare staff and mutilated bodies of palestinians in Khan Yunis have all but disappeared from the news.
No news about starvation.
No news about murder of aid workers by IDF.
No news of bombing tent cities with fire bombs.
No news of Netanyahu ignoring the peace proposal.
No news that Biden keep sending weapons and money to Netanyahu.
I guess it's good that we see the student protests are spreading, but it should not be forgetting WHY they are protesting and what over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live every day.
Ho lee shit.
The AP has found that the number of deaths caused by the police in the US is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than thought because they're not always reported as being "officer-involved."
❝
The investigation found that between 2012 and 2021, more than a thousand people died after police use physical force that was not intended to be lethal. That includes batons, stun guns, physical restraints, and chemical agents. The oldest victim was 95 and the youngest 15.
Only 28 of the officers were charged.
The Police role was only cited in about half of the cases, meaning that many more Americans have died at the hands of the police than was previously known.
❞
Today in Labor History March 30, 1930: Hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers demonstrated in thirty cities. 35,000 marched in New York City and were violently assaulted by the police. At the time, there was virtually no formal aid available for the unemployed or poor. The ruling elite feared that workers would choose the dole over work if given the choice. So, they opposed unemployment insurance. Even the AFL opposed unemployment insurance because it saw itself as the representative of skilled workers only. It didn’t care about unskilled factory workers. The demonstrations were organized by the Communist Party, with the goal of overthrowing capitalism.
Please do not think that Israelis are a monolith standing behind what is happening in Gaza with unwavering loyalty. Do not let Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, or the mainstream Israeli pundits speak for us.
Today in Labor History March 29, 1948: Police attacked striking members of the United Financial Employees’ Union and arrested forty-three in the “Battle of Wall Street.” This was the first and only strike in the history of the New York or American Stock Exchanges.
"Every day, [U.S.] police rely on common tactics that, unlike guns, are meant to stop people without killing them. These include physical holds, Tasers and body blows. This kind of police force isn't supposed to be lethal. Who is dying, how — and why?"
AP offers an in-depth interactive investigation into over 1,000 deaths (Viewer discretion advised): https://flip.it/moPE1p
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.
Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.
The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
Today in Labor History March 7, 1932: Over 3,000 people, led by the United Auto Workers, marched on the main Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Workers on the Ford Hunger March were demanding that laid off colleagues be rehired. They also demanded a slow-down of the assembly lines and an end to the evictions of unemployed workers from their homes. Marchers carried banners saying "Give Us Work," "We Want Bread Not Crumbs," and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor." During the protests, police opened fire with machine guns, killing 4 and injuring 60. A fifth worker died later from his wounds. The Unemployed Council (part of the Communist Party) also supported the march.
Today in Labor History March 6, 1930: 100,000 people demonstrated for jobs in New York City. Demonstrations by unemployed workers, demanding unemployment insurance, occurred in virtually every major U.S. city. In New York, police attacked a crowd of 35,000. In Cleveland, 10,000 people battled police. In Detroit, the Communist Party organized an underemployment demonstration. Over 50,000 people showed up. Thousands took to the streets in Toledo, Flint and Pontiac. These demonstrations led to the creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), sponsored by Republican congressman Hamilton Fish, with the support of the American Federation of Labor, to investigate and quash radical activities.
Today in Labor History March 5, 1965: A Leftist uprising against British colonialism erupted in Bahrain, known as the March Intifada. The uprising began after the Bahrain Petroleum Company laid off hundreds of workers at on March 5, 1965. Students at Manama High School, the only high school in Bahrain, went out into the streets to protest the lay-offs. Several people died in the clashes between protesters and police. The authorities quickly suppressed the uprising. However, as news of the crackdown spread, protests erupted throughout the country, creating a nationwide uprising which lasted for a month.
It’s been a couple days now, but @radleybalko published the final part of his detailed refutation of the despicable revisionist conspiracies of George Floyd’s murder, perpetuated by the right-wing documentary The Fall of Minneapolis and various conservative “journalists”.
No individual or publication who promoted these conspiracies should be take seriously ever again.