Ridding society of the police is both a practical demand in the struggle against oppression, and an integral part of socialist revolution. brian bean’s new book, Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, is an excellent intervention in the debates on a future without state violence. As bean argues, the movement to abolish the police is really the movement to abolish capitalism.
Rodney Hinton Jr., who allegedly killed a sheriff’s deputy after cops murdered his teenage son in Cincinnati, has become a folk hero and lightning rod for rage against the system of racist policing in the US. Though vigilante violence is not the way forward, we find political significance in Hinton’s actions, and he has our unconditional solidarity.
Neurodivergent liberation is inextricably bound up with the fight to abolish the police and build a socialist system. Half of the victims of US police murders are neurodivergent or disabled. Because our brains function differently and we process and react to information in ways outside the norm, we’re more likely to be seen as a threat and face brutalization and arrest.
The anti-racist and anti-police brutality movement has turned toward abolitionism in recent years. It has called for the complete elimination of police and prisons. This is a radical turn and to be applauded, but it does have its problems. One of the key arguments for...