Abolition of policing

As the summer born in flames nears its end in Minneapolis, the counterinsurgency playbook plays out much as expected. As symbolic concessions are granted all over, the material reality of racist police violence driven by propertied interests continues.

As discussions of police abolition and how other models of justice could work move forward and gain a mainstream audience, it is important to reiterate that "transformative justice" does not mean centering the harm-doer and their process of redemption.

Ever since the Minneapolis Uprising, different police brutality groups have been grappling with how to deal with the mass popularity of the “Abolish the Police” demand - and the shocking maneuver of the City Council to at least pay lip service to this demand.

On this date in 1934 the Minneapolis Police opened fire on strikers in the warehouse district, shooting 67 picketers and killing two men – a Teamster and an unemployed supporter.

The movement by auto workers not to make cop cars, tech workers not to make surveillance equipment for repression, furniture workers not to supply ICE, GE workers to build respirators, and so on is a promising sign that the new labor militancy is not only around wages or benefits, but about workers reclaiming some degree of ownership over our work and a say in what we produce.

Here in Minneapolis, we are in the first "trough" of the wave of the uprising. MAJOR concessions have been granted by institutions cutting ties with the MPD and the City Council (including members who have been consistently obstructionist to the movement against policing) announcing a plan for abolishing the MPD.