Comments on: INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence has a new website

By: trans women resources

trans women resources — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:08:37 +0000

[...] on police brutality and other forms of law enforcement violence against women of color and trans …http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/05/15/incite-women-of-color-against-violence-has-a-new-we…South Africa: Women Still On a Long, Hard Road AllAfrica.comallAfrica: African news and information [...]

By: When Authorities “Don’t Give a Shit” : The Curvature

When Authorities “Don’t Give a Shit” : The Curvature — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:00:15 +0000

[...] of POC communities to rely on police, particularly to protect women of color against violence, and the need for alternate community-based strategies. I know that it’s often difficult for white and/or class-privileged women to understand that [...]

By: Holly

Holly — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:24:00 +0000

1) I don’t think INCITE! (or any prison abolitionists that I’m aware of) really advocate abruptly “turning off” the police state or replacing it with pure anarchy. That’s not how sustainable change is built; it’s not an overnight process. So that’s basically just a classic straw argument.

2) exholt, I hate to break it to you, but reduction of state control over people’s bodies is not exclusively a libertarian idea, it’s a very common theme in a lot of classic radical left-wing politics even if you see it as being at odds with “big government” centrist liberalism. The difference with libertarianism is that there tends to be a focus on economic justice and economic equality of outcome as well, as opposed to free market rule. But this is definitely not the thread for that series of arguments.

By: exholt

exholt — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:30:15 +0000

organizing, activism, education, developing alternatives to reliance on the state — in our current untrustworthy system.

Holly,

I find it very interesting that this is a quasi-libertarian idea on a blog that tends to vehemently disagree with that political ideology.

It is also one I’ve frequently heard from older Chinese immigrants who still held deep fears of the state from their experiences with tyranny from both domestic and colonial occupations. Considering my older relatives’ accounts of living under Imperial Japanese occupation and/or under Maoist rule during the 100 Flowers campaign and the Cultural Revolution, I cannot blame them.

It is one reason why TPHG’s enthusiasm for a violent Marxist/Maoist revolution is very disquieting. This enthusiasm is similar to ones held by many ignorant sheltered upper/upper-middle class American classmates at my college who never lived or knew someone who lived under such regimes.

Hate to break it to ya, but the Maoist era was no paradise with the crush of dissent in the 1950′s in events such as the 100 Flowers campaign which foreshadowed the Cultural Revolution where greater witchhunts for “Capitalist roaders” and “counterrevolutionaries” caused great bloodshed and a complete shutdown of society.

While many privileged Westerners celebrate the Cultural Revolution as part of Marxist/Maoist chic, it is regarded by most Chinese as a bloody chaotic period and a great waste, especially for the adolescents and young adults whose lives and education were interrupted for 10+ years.

Personally, I would regard these examples of brutality in Marxist/Maoist inspired regimes along with the imperialist and fascist colonialists as good cases for reducing state policing power and trust….not the strengthening of them.

By: ThePakistaniHereticalGirl

ThePakistaniHereticalGirl — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:11:55 +0000

I told you, we can not dispense with policing, if we did, we would just lose power within 5 minutes and u will get policing back- only we will have no say, that’s quite apart from the chaos and anarchy of anti social criminal elements terrorizing poor communities. See, any slight loosening of the security apparatus upon society- we get pure mayhem and panedemonium, like that mess after hurricane Katrina, or when America foolishly disbanded the Iraqi army. You dismantle the police where will u be, this is like in the famed American movie, “ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK”, like when they built a huge wall around New York and inside was all these criminals, and the leader, who was that? His name was ‘the Duke’, and he had a huge white limo with crystal glass chandeliers, the Duke ruled Manhattan, like a sultanate, he was king of criminals and it was like the hell of Dante. So it will be like a hell if we remove the police, no, our system is another, we are the police and we rule cos we are the poor and the oppressed and all exploiters, abusers, criminals, they all getting removed, permanently.
Now about “Escape from New York”, I saw it when i was maybe 9 and me mum told me like this, “See how Americans live, they are anarchy and crime and drugs and they have these walled cities.” And so we thought the wall was real actually, I mean, as Pakistanis, we looking at America and seeing like chaos and anarchy, it’s scary. But actually, like i know now, there is no wall in New York, it’s just a story, but it is hard to seperate fiction from fact when u don’t know, this is how we getting such myths about America, but it stays in ure mind even when u grow up. Anyhow, if we remove the police, it WILL be like that movie, no way, and all the poor people and women will be living a horrible life.
For me, it’s a idealogical point also, LAW AND ORDER, this is the absolute basis of society, very strict order and utter obedience to the state, this is the ideal of revolution, i want smart, brave, nice people, not drugs and rubbish, no.
Now did u see the Communist movie “the battle of Algiers”, there was me favorite cinematic scene in the anti colonialist movie, there was a brothel and inside hundrds of girls and outside there was a pro french mafia boss and he was like Al Capone and shouting how big he is and how these women are his and how he rules Algiers, blah blah blah. What happened? A young Algerian revolutionary, just 14 years old strolled up and gunned him down with a AK-47. See, this is what I am talking about. Now we got all these no go areas and drugs barons and crime lords etc etc, and they are shouting like this, “I am the king of the world, I am the big boss.” Now how long do u think he can last if i get the power, can he argue with a tank? See, i would love to have a war with America and America loses and then I get made like Commissar for America Occupied Territories and I swear, really, i would love love love that job of just crushing criminals, tanks sweeping into these areas and just pacifying them and liberating the people and then I would parade all these rapists, drug lords, criminals, all these parasites who made people afraid and I would have all loudspeakers telling them all their crimes and then just machine gun them in lines, this is what I would do, enjoy it also and all people of America like from “Incite” and nice people, they will be cheering cos we are the police, yes, but we are the PEOPLE’S POLICE.

By: foxybrown

foxybrown — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:58:01 +0000

lindsay, actually incite seems to be addressing the issue of "if not prisons/police, then what?" I think nadia's right, they want to dismantle the prison industrial complex (including policing), and they are working with communities to develop alternative strategies for addressing gender violence within communities.

By: nadia

nadia — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:04:15 +0000

lindsay, you are talking about a difference between *reform* and *abolition*. i don’t think the function of any of INCITE!’s work is to help change or reform the existing system; the goal is to dismantle it.

By: Kakalina

Kakalina — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:09:21 +0000

There’s a lot of discrimination against disabled people as well (I heard recently about a case of police brutality against a deaf man simply because the cop thought that the man was hearing and was just trying to be difficult–then the police arrested the poor man on charges of resisting arrest scowl). I’ve experienced some on the annoying level like when a hearing person asks me a question and I ask them to repeat it more slowly, and they just blink and go “Oh, deaf” and walk away. I can lip-read, that’s not the problem. I just need them to speak a little more slowly sometimes (especially if they have a mustache lols). I actually speak very well (though I increasingly depend more on signing as I get older), so I can communicate with others without a problem. I’m patient with them, so hearing people seem to assume that I’m doing fine and they don’t need to extend the courtesy to me. Say WHAT?! Hmph
There’s an interesting academic paper called “Conflict Resolution Among Peaceful Societies” which is what it sounds like, an analyses in the differences in Conflict Resolution between peaceful and non-peaceful societies (US is classified as non-peaceful).
I’m not especially surprised that Pakistani women aren’t found very often in the UK prison system. Immigrants (in almost any country) tend to have a record better than native citizens smiles. They also have a record of being more patriotic lols. It’s like hearing people worrying about deaf people on the highway when deaf people percentage-wise have a better record than many hearing people (this is obviously not a universal winks).
So, yeah, I think minorities in general have a harder time with the police than majorities do. *bleh* :P

By: ThePakistaniHereticalGirl

ThePakistaniHereticalGirl — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:02:51 +0000

And the implication is therefore that if black women in America were basically well behaved angels- the social and political context of their reality WOULD STILL MEAN THAT THEY WOULD BE CRIMINALIZED by the state.

By: ThePakistaniHereticalGirl

ThePakistaniHereticalGirl — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:28:44 +0000

In fact, Pakistani women are almost totally absent in the UK prison population. The Police crackdown in Muslim areas is seen as ‘hostile’ by many Muslim women, but this is tempered by a genuine fear of terrorism. Again, u must avoid racist steretypes that see all Muslim women as passive agressive or if not in outright support of extremists like Al Muhajiruun and Hezb Al Tahrir, we are not. What is most annoying is the sese that we are being abandoned to underachievment and gender streaming, in other ways- the racist bigotry of low expectations. There could arise in the future a situation where racial polarization and the perception that the police is anti community create a situation not unlike that which seems to exist with woc in America- which is why a group like incite- might be us too, 10 years down the line. So yes, despite the very low prison statistics u quote, INCITE and its message could potentially intersect with our reality at some point in the future. Regarding the low statistics, most women are in detention here not for murdering their children for honor or for terrorism, but for falling foul of the UK’s complex immigration regulations. There is however a hidden problem of sexual exploitiation by gangs of us and a growing drug problem; young women run away from Islamic repression, end up on the streets as sex workers and are then punished by the state that failed to protect them in the first place. This very slow process of crimianlization is also something that intersects between woc in the United States and immigrant Muslim communities in the UK.