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J blue

Hi everyone,
Don’t call the police is a website that has non-carceral/non-policing, community based resources for mental health, domestic violence, housing, solving conflicts, and now:

Getting help if your right to vote is being infringed. Check it out 👇

dontcallthepolice.com

Don't Call The PoliceResources by city - Don't Call The PoliceDatabase of local and national community-based alternatives to calling the police or 911, broken down by city

@jblue If you grew up in a dirt poor neighborhood, police avoidance was taught from an early age. It's why some people instinctively run from the cops and get shot in the back.

@jblue

Thanks for posting this!

Added to my appendix on Police:

kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/1

kolektiva.socialRD (@RD4Anarchy@kolektiva.social)Appendix 6: 🚨POLICE!🚨 The institution of police that we have now has only existed for around 200 years, but many people have been conditioned to accept it as a natural and necessary fact of life and have trouble accepting the idea of abolishing the police, even if they strongly support major (dare I say utopian) police reform. Constantly echoing around the Fediverse are debates around questions like "what would you replace police with?" or "what would you do about violent crimes?" Let's examine the real origins and purposes of police, and the truth about what they actually do and don't do. Origins of the police - David Whitehouse "Excellent text examining the creation of the first police forces, which took place in England and the US in just a few decades in the mid-19th century. And explaining that they were not brought into being to prevent crime or protect the public, but primarily to control crowds: the working class, white and black." https://libcom.org/article/origins-police-david-whitehouse Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/ Police Have No Duty to Protect the Public https://prospect.org/justice/police-have-no-duty-to-protect-the-public/ The Kids The Guns Are For The same police force that failed Uvalde children is arresting peaceful student protesters at UT Austin. It's not about safety. It's about order. https://www.momleft.com/p/the-kids-the-guns-are-for Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5 A little roundup of some of the ways police play a “necessary role” in society. (sarcastically titled thread of links compiled by @HeavenlyPossum) https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110809880758838358 The Body Camera: The Language of our Dreams (64 page pdf from the Yale Journal of Law & Liberation) Did you know that police forces were pushing to implement body cams on their own, before they were pressured to do so by activists for police reform? To understand why, I highly recommend this very well-researched and revealing article by Alec Karakatsanis penetrating the facade of police reform in the specific case of body cams. Excerpts from the introduction: Most people would prefer a society with less government surveillance, violence by employees of the state, and waste of public resources. And yet they all keep growing despite decades of “reform.” It is my uncomfortable suggestion in this article that they all keep expanding in part because of these “reforms.” ... By situating the rise of the police body camera within its actual legal, political, and economic contexts, I suggest that the body camera is one of the most important Trojan horses in contemporary U.S. history. ... All of it happened under the guise of making the police bureaucracy more “accountable” and “transparent.” https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/f/4764/files/2024/07/Alec-Karakatsanis_The-Body-Camera-FINAL.pdf The End of Policing Means the End of Capitalism — Some Likely but Rarely Discussed Economic Effects of Abolition by @AdrianRiskin https://chez-risk.in/2023/08/24/the-end-of-policing-means-the-end-of-capitalism-some-likely-but-rarely-discussed-economic-effects-of-abolition/ Alternatives to Police A compilation of case-studies on alternatives to cops. A long bibliography for further reading is also included. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rose-city-copwatch-alternatives-to-police Community-based alternatives to police, by city Don’t Call The Police is a website that has non-carceral/non-policing, community-based resources for domestic violence & sexual assault, mental health, housing, LGBTQ+, youth, elders, crime, substances, and voter protection. https://dontcallthepolice.com/ The End of Policing This book by Alex Vitale falls short of addressing fundamental conditions such as the state, rule of law, and capitalism, and so its proposed solutions are somewhat shallow and flimsy, and despite the title it never quite fully embraces complete abolition of police. Nevertheless it remains a valuable resource as a detailed survey of the vast landscape of death, damage and abuse caused by police (which has only gotten worse since 2017 when this book was published). Notably this book makes its argument against police from a more conventional, non-anarchist context, demonstrating that police abolition is not merely a fringe ideology of extreme radicals but an idea that makes sense even in more mainstream, pragmatic liberal terms. https://files.libcom.org/files/Vitale%20-%20The%20End%20of%20Policing%20(Police)%20(2017).pdf The institution of police is closely associated with a belief in Rule Of Law. Here are a couple essays on that important context: Already shared earlier in this thread, this classic piece "The Conspiracy of Law" by Howard Zinn is also very appropriate here. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/howard-zinn-the-conspiracy-of-law Take Your Pick: Law or Freedom How “Nobody Is above the Law” Abets the Rise of Tyranny https://crimethinc.com/2018/11/09/take-your-pick-law-or-freedom-how-nobody-is-above-the-law-abets-the-rise-of-tyranny #police #abolition #ACAB #RuleOfLaw