The Trump regime’s occupation of Minneapolis with thousands of militarized ICE agents has resulted in horrific scenes of state violence and murder — part of a new mask-off authoritarian approach, as the US empire becomes more aggressive and dangerous both at home and abroad. It has also galvanized a courageous, inspiring, and effective grassroots resistance that shows the way forward for the left.
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.
In the eyes of the capitalist ruling class, workers are deprived of their humanity and are reduced to profit-producing machines. Our basic human needs are locked behind a paywall, leaving us the choices of starving to death or purchasing our right to survive another...
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...