When Movements Embrace Police Abolition, the Rich Resurrect “Reform” | Black Agenda Report

When Movements Embrace Police Abolition, the Rich Resurrect “Reform”

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford

09 Mar 2021

🖨️ Print Article

Margaret Kimberley · When Movements Embrace Police Abolition, the Rich Resurrect “Reform”

“As soon as movements emerge that identify the normal operations of the police” and other capitalist institutions as the problem, the regime directs the language of the debate towards reform, said Dylan Rodriguez, professor of medica culture at the University of California at Riverside. “People are no longer tolerating anti-Black police terror,” said Rodriguez. To change the subject from police and prison abolition, the system’s defenders pretend the debate is centered on preservation of these institutions, through reform.

Police Repression

More Stories

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Black People Lose in 2020
05 Nov 2020
Black people will get nothing from a Joe Biden administration except fiscal austerity and the precarity that comes with it.
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Confronting Bipartisan Repression and the US-led Axis of Domination Beyond Election Day
04 Nov 2020
No matter who sits in the white peoples’ house, we will have to continue to fight for social justice, democracy, and People(s)-Centered Human Rights.
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
American Exceptionalism Won’t Save the U.S. Empire from Itself, or Stop China’s Rise
04 Nov 2020
China’s rise reflects a bourgeoning global movement away from U.S. imperialism and toward self-determination.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
That is not the Question
04 Nov 2020
The question is not if teargas breath thugs weaponizing COVID; co-signing starvation; stage whispering, “Lock her up!” ripping children from mothers’ arms—splintering
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Rubble Kings: How the Violence Stopped and Hip Hop Emerged in the South Bronx
04 Nov 2020
A fact-based, crowd-funded film on urban devastation and gang warfare in the South Bronx packs a bigger political punch than the cult classic, The Warriors.