San Francisco City College. 22nd St. and Valencia. San Francisco
CA
“Police Brutality”
An analysis of the culture of the local police in the US
by Steve Martinot
There will be a meeting on the book. The book will be discussed as a means of understanding and opposing what is being developed as our present police state.
When did the US start to become fascist? 1913? 1945? Or 1607? How do we understand the mind of the current police?
From their history? From their economy? Or from their goal of power
They build power through murders, averaging 1100 a year. (That is more than 3 a day)
What are police goals in their murders? What kind of white supremacist structure are they building? What is the structure of their brutality?
They militarize their actions to express their hegemony. They take over ICE to make it a mediation for themselves. They and the courts are turning ICE into a US Gestapo. They are rapidly constructing a police law unto themselves (with impunity).
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They shoot people running away.
Anyone running away from police restraint (e.g. handcuffing), is resisting the cop.
When a cop shoots him, he had decided to do that — for his target’s disobedience.
But obedience is irrelevant to a dead man.
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It even happens in Berkeley. After a homeless person had taken a sandwich from a downtown store, the cops surrounded him and one fired his gun. He hit the guy in the jaw. That means he was aiming for his head, which means he intended to kill him — (for a sandwich?) – but missed.
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The police operate on a notion of race as a verb, and not a noun. The verb stands for “to racialize.” They intend to set themselves up as a white line across society, separating white people from all others. They kill people of color, and beat white people who reject or oppose their supremacy. The cops thus fill the prisons.
Steve Martinot has been fighting racism and white supremacy all his life. He has written books critiquing racism and white supremacy (“The Rule of Racialization,” “The Machinery of Whiteness,” “Police Brutality,” “The Need to Abolish the Prison System”). He has led strikes in New York’s Garment District against industry and union racism. He has written against police militarism and for prison abolition.