OFFICIAL STATEMENT: Reject the attempt by Democrats and Republicans to expand policing and surveillance under the guise of "counter terrorism"! Defund and Demilitarize the Police!

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Just days after the far-right coup attempt at the Capitol, Joe Biden announced a plan to pass new laws against domestic terrorism and increase funding to fight “ideologically inspired violent extremists.” 2/

In our current state of emergency, liberals and even some on the left might find comfort in this. However, we must strongly oppose any attempt at expanding the US’s machinery of state violence. 3/

Off-duty police officers from across the country were enthusiastic participants&Capitol police capitulated to & even collaborated w the mob. Biden’s response to increase the power and scope of law enforcement is dangerous and a testament to the Dem party’s failed leadership.
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We have been here before. We have seen again and again how government surveillance and counter-terrorism fails to fight white supremacist violence and becomes a tool of repression against Black and Brown people instead. 5/

COINTELPRO was intended to control domestic extremism on both ends of the political spectrum but allowed white supremacists free reign while carrying out a campaign of surveillance, harassment and assassinations targeting Black, Brown, Indigenous and anti-war movements. 6/

After 9/11, laws like the Patriot Act and agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol were used as tools of state violence against Arab Americans, African Americans and immigrants. 7/

Mosques, HBCUs, anti-war activists, and eventually the BLM movement have all been spied on by the post-9/11 national security state. 8/

The militarization of the police skyrocketed in the last 20 years through a federal program which allowed local police departments to have military surplus tanks, weapons and supplies manufactured for endless US imperial “wars against terror” in the Middle East. 9/

Even DPD’s facial recognition program was modeled after surveillance programs created by the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 in the name of fighting terrorism. Now, this technology is used to criminalize and misidentify working class Black and Brown Detroiters 10/

The government does not lack the means to punish those who stormed the capitol. They use these punishments every day in Black and Brown communities. 11/

Counter-terrorism can never be justice because the only thing it protects is the state’s monopoly on violence. And in the US, state violence is racist violence. With that monopoly being called into question through right-wing radicalization and political instability, 12/

Biden has signaled that the democrats want to maintain it through the very forms of asymmetrical repression that turned a blind eye to white supremacy and set the stage for the coup attempt in the first place. 13/

Reckoning with January 6th does not mean further empowering the state. It means addressing the unequal response of the police to the far right and BLM protests. We must stand against any policies that empower the police 14/

and continue to fight political repression of the left by demanding the release of political prisoners and the dropping of all charges against racial justice protesters. 15/