Friday brought us the most frightening news of this terrible election season: The National Fraternal Order of Police, a 330,000-member union of law enforcement officers, has endorsed Donald Trump for president. “Our members believe he will make America safe again,” FOP President Chuck Canterbury said in a statement. Trump “seriously looked at the issues facingContinue reading “Paramilitary Organization Endorses Fascist; Nation Worries”
Tag Archives: militarization
School Discipline And Socialization For The Carceral State
Schools are a buffer zone, artfully, strategically, placed between zones of dysfunction–the homes of ‘broken’ families, populated by the wrong ethnicity and racial category, which produce criminality and social pathology–and the rest of society. Here, a net may be cast, trawling through the swarms of schoolchildren, catching the bad, the misbehaved, the unrepentant repeat offendersContinue reading “School Discipline And Socialization For The Carceral State”
Our Police, Keeping Our World Safe From Young Black Women
The next time a video link passes you by on social media stop and take a closer look. Chances are, the dysfunction implicated in it can be traced back to one cause, and one cause alone: teenaged black women. And the police of this nation are on the case, keeping us safe by any meansContinue reading “Our Police, Keeping Our World Safe From Young Black Women”
NYPD: In New York, Protests Are A Terror Threat
There truly can be no police department more tone-deaf, more insensitive, more colossally, thickly stupid and offensive than the New York Police Department. Consider, for instance, its latest announcement, that of the formation of a special anti-terror unit: A brand new unit of 350 NYPD officers will roam the city with riot gear and machineContinue reading “NYPD: In New York, Protests Are A Terror Threat”
Nick Kristof Should Stick To High Profile Rescues
Nick Kristof writes on his Twitter feed: Activists perhaps should have focused less on Michael Brown, more on shooting of 12-yr-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland http://nyti.ms/1CHROG7 This is the kind of sensible, pragmatic advice that journalists like Kristof, safely ensconced in their opinion pages, are in the habit of handing out to unhinged radicals everywhere:Continue reading “Nick Kristof Should Stick To High Profile Rescues”
Calling Bullshit On ‘Outside Agitators’ in Ferguson
A few days ago, a friend on Facebook posted the following as his status: Would any of you be down to help me organize a march on Ferguson, MO? Dead serious. It’s something I hope would send a powerful message to the powers that be, but I’d need help getting it all together. I mean,Continue reading “Calling Bullshit On ‘Outside Agitators’ in Ferguson”
Ferguson And The Tale Of Two Wars
A nation at war–an indefinite, borderless one, conducted against a faceless enemy, with little legal or moral restraint, with an endless wallet to be dipped into–will find, sooner or later, that the same inchoateness, the same vagueness, the same productive lack of definition of that conflict, which permitted its waging to be conducted secretly withoutContinue reading “Ferguson And The Tale Of Two Wars”
Machine Gun Men: Not Your Grandfather’s Police
It was a common sight in New York City: soldiers, paramilitary or regular in origin, wearing battle fatigues and carrying assault rifles and machine guns, standing guard in various bustling points of urban interaction–train stations and bus terminals most commonly. Typically, these were deployed after some mysterious, unspecified warning would be made public by theContinue reading “Machine Gun Men: Not Your Grandfather’s Police”
Policing Ferguson: Executions, Demonizing Protest, Militarization
The killing–execution style–of Michael Brown, the protests in Ferguson that followed, and their policing, both rhetorically and literally, demonstrate some chilling facts about modern American life. Most obviously, police continue to over-police, with overbearing aggressiveness and force, communities of color. They have poor relationships with their subjects–an apt description given the asymmetry of power thatContinue reading “Policing Ferguson: Executions, Demonizing Protest, Militarization”
Getting What We Really Want: Heavily Armed Police Forces
A couple of months ago, I made note, yet again, of the steady militarization of US police. Today, we have more news from that ‘front.’ (A word that seems ever more appropriate). The New York Times‘ Matt Apuzzo reports: [A]s President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,”Continue reading “Getting What We Really Want: Heavily Armed Police Forces”
Samir Chopra 