Police-Brutality

Editors note: this article from Deep Green Resistance member and slam poet world champ Dominique Christina was published recently in the wake of the latest mass shooting in Virginia. In the piece, Dominique reflects on the media treatment of different cases: they make the killing of white people into tragedies (which they are), but don’t do the same to the killings of black women and men. Instead, these killings are fetishized and viewed over and over again without consideration for the family and friends of the victims. This is not a new tradition in America; lynchings were often public events in the South. Bring your kids, bring a picnic. It’s a sensation, and it reflects how white supremacy is still the ruling law of this land, and how people of color are still not viewed as fully human inside this system. We invite you to read Dominique’s piece and reflect on her words. ...

This article by our friend Dominique Christina speaks powerfully to the issues of racism and police violence against black people and other people of color in the United States. – It is difficult to be radical in Denver. We are so privileged here. There’s a Starbucks and a Whole Foods on every corner; and dog parks and community gardens and it’s all so…seductive. It has an almost soporific effect. One can be lulled right to sleep by the idyllic snow-capped mountains and trendy cafes that suggest there is no crisis here. Our hoods aren’t like hoods in Chicago, Detroit, Jersey, parts of New York, New Orleans, St. Louis…Baltimore. No gritty crime drama about the drug trade and the alarmingly high homicide rates in the inner city could ever be filmed here. We are a little too deft with our trash pickups and our gentrification. Let me start near the beginning. ...

The Modern COINTELPRO and How To Fight It Despite the seeming popularity of environmental and social justice work in the modern world, we’re not winning. We’re losing. In fact, we’re losing really badly. Why is that? One reason is because few popular strategies pose real threats to power. That’s not an accident: the rules of social change have been clearly defined by those in power. Either you play by the rules — rules which don’t allow you to win — or you break free of the rules, and face the consequences. ...

The San Diego Police Department scares me. All police, for that matter, scare me. I’m writing this because I cannot drown out the sharp pops of a burst of police gunfire hanging on the still desert air. I heard the eerily common sound of gunshots as I watched a video of police shooting an unarmed 20 year-old black man named D’Andre Berghardt near Red Rock Canyon in Nevada the other day with my partner. ...