Resources

Throughout its history, law enforcement has deemed Black activism as a national security threat. Law enforcement has used its powers to chill the speech and movements of Black activists and activism that’s done on behalf of issues that impact Black communities. In Criminalizing Black protest: When we resist, the 34th episode of “The Activist Files,” two activists working to bring attention to the environmental racism in St. James Parish, Louisiana, which is a historic Black community under threat of destruction by Formosa Plastics, share their stories of how police criminalized their activism.

In this episode, Angela Davis discusses her experience this summer during uprising, the remarkable popularization of abolition, the significance of addressing gender violence and inequality in the fight for liberation, and much much more.

Andrea Ritchie joins the show to talk about her research with the group Interrupting Criminalization, specifically their new report looking back on the “Defund the Police” demand in 2020. The discussion begins with a look at the work that Interrupting Criminalization does, and their findings on the various successes and failures activists have had with the “Defund” demand over the last year. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about how the state has tried to undermine abolitionist efforts. Toward the end, we speak about the need to fund experimental approaches to harm, including those that might fail.

The 2020 rebellions have sparked renewed discussions surrounding a host of racial issues, including police brutality toward black men. Advocates argue that black women are similarly exposed to excessive police violence yet routinely forgotten or ignored. Among their demands: Say Her Name.

The movement to defund the police in the United States is gaining unprecedented momentum as protests continue across the globe. This week on Intercepted: Chenjerai Kumanyika is joined by the iconic geographer and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Gilmore is one of the world’s preeminent scholars on prisons and the machinery of carceral punishment and policing. In this discussion, she offers a sweeping and detailed analysis of the relentless expansion and funding of police and prisons, and how locking people in cages has become central to the American project. Gilmore offers a comprehensive road map for understanding how we have arrived at the present political moment of brutality and rebellion, and she lays out the need for prison abolition and defunding police forces.

Abolition has been a huge topic in the wake of the uprising sparked by the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Calls to defund or abolish the police are now experiencing a surge of interest, in the form of street art, protest signs, op eds, and more. In this episode, I’ll be exploring things to consider as you take your first steps toward joining the abolitionist movement, especially in this tumultuous moment of a pandemic and global uprising, in a conversation with Mariame Kaba.

A radical practice is suddenly getting mainstream attention. Will it change how we help one another? This article gives examples of mutual aid practices happening during the COVID-19 crisis, the history of mutual aid, and the potential future of the practice as we move forward.

Longtime abolitionists, thinkers, writers, activists, militants: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Kim Wilson, and Amanda Alexander discuss revolutionary survival amidst pandemia and how abolitionist struggle is making the ‘impossible’ become possible.

This episode details recent reports that the National Guard or US military may be used in a law enforcement capacity and what this says about the failures of the liberal state. With unemployment potentially reaching 30 percent and an urgent, robust social democratic response from the federal government unlikely, a debate about safeguarding against martial order––especially from an administration with a well documented inclination towards abuse of power–-is urgently needed.