by Geo Maher
12. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010), 199.
13. Bianca Bruno, “Human Cost of Border-Protection Policies High, Immigrant Advocates Reveal,” Courthouse News, October 1, 2019, courthousenews.com.
14. Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 44–5.
15. Chris Cillizza, “The Remarkable History of the Family Separation Crisis,” CNN, June 18, 2018, cnn.com.
16. Denvir, All-American Nativism, 70.
17. Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Abolish ICE (New York: OR Books, 2019), 30.
18. Uhlmann, Abolish ICE, 49.
19. Maria Sacchetti, “Deportations from the Interior of the United States Are Rising under Trump,” Washington Post, October 7, 2017, washingtonpost.com.
20. Benjy Sarlin, “This Democrat Is Writing a Bill to ‘Abolish ICE.’ Here’s How It Would Work,” NBC, June 30, 2018, nbcnews.com.
21. Juliette Kayyem, “Trump Is the Problem,” The Atlantic, July 23, 2020, theatlantic.com.
22. Uhlmann, Abolish ICE, 8.
23. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 20.
24. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 148.
25. K-Sue Park, “Self-Deportation Nation,” Harvard Law Review 132, n. 7 (May 2019).
26. See Douglas S. Massey and Julia Gelatt, “What Happened to the Wages of Mexican Immigrants? Trends and Interpretations,” Latino Studies 8, n. 3 (Autumn 2010).
27. Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 105–7.
28. HoSang and Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots, 111.
29. HoSang and Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots, 114.
30. Garvey was himself a Jamaican-born migrant, and Douglass advocated what Juliet Hooker has recently characterized as a “universal right to migration.” Juliet Hooker, Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 51.
31. Nagle’s fixation on Cesar Chavez is revealing. While Chavez’s prime concern was the way that so-called “wetback” labor was being weaponized by the bosses to break strikes, he stood out nevertheless for his stubborn opposition to newer waves of migrant labor. What Nagle fails to mention is that Chavez’s anti-migrant politics were part of cozying up to the Democratic Party and proved increasingly unpopular among the grass roots. As Justin Akers Chacón has shown, “most farmworkers had familial and other social ties to undocumented populations and resented collaboration with la migra,” and the broader movement opted to build expansive transnational solidarities rather than embracing the divisions imposed by the bosses. Ultimately, the case of Chavez proves exactly the opposite of what Nagle seems to think: that capitalists can leverage so-called “illegals” against documented workers not despite the border, but because of it.
32. V.I. Lenin, “Letter to the Secretary of the Socialist Propaganda League” (1915), available at marxists.org.
33. Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, “Responding to ‘The Left Case Against Open Borders,’” Current Affairs, November 29, 2018, currentaffairs.org.
34. Paul Ortiz, An African American and Latinx History of the United States (Boston: Beacon, 2018), 163.
35. A. Naomi Paik, Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding US Immigration for the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020), 50.
36. Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 45.
37. Lytle Hernández, Migra!, 41.
38. Denvir, All-American Nativism, 11.
39. Denvir, All-American Nativism, 28.
40. Greg Grandin, “The Border Patrol Has Been a Cult of Brutality Since 1924,” The Intercept, January 12, 2019, theintercept.com.
41. Nicholas Kulish et al., “Immigration Agents Discover New Freedom to Deport Under Trump,” New York Times, February 25, 2017, nytimes.com.
42. Franklin Foer, “How Trump Radicalized ICE,” The Atlantic, September 2018, theatlantic.com. Travis Linneman describes a monthly podcast put out by the National Border Patrol Council called The Green Line, an explicit analogy to the “blue line” of policing. The podcast, however, opens with audio from the Night’s Watch from HBO’s Game of Thrones—guardians of a massive wall that separates humanity from a world of monsters and zombies. The Horror of Police (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming).
43. “Joint Press Release Between Border Patrol and ICE Councils,” iceunion.org.
44. Kim Kelly, “Abolish ICE’s Union,” The New Republic, September 2, 2019, newrepublic.com.
45. Matt Ford, “Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security,” The New Republic, February 21, 2018, newrepublic.com.
46. Emily S. Rueb, “JPMorgan Chase Stops Funding Private Prison Companies, and Immigration Activists Applaud,” New York Times, March 6, 2019, nytimes.com.
47. Uhlmann, Abolish ICE, 130.
48. “Laibar Sing Airport Action Dec 10,” YouTube, uploaded December 9, 2010, youtube.com/watch?v=ywWVquJeUGw.
49. Harsha Walia, Undoing Border Imperialism (Oakland: AK Press, 2013).
50. Paik, Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary, 107.
51. P.E. Moskowitz, The Case against Free Speech (New York: Bold Type, 2019), 181–3.
52. Uhlmann, Abolish ICE, 100.
53. Paik, Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary, 103.
54. Paik, Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary, 109–10.
55. Paik, Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary, 124.
56. Paik, Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary, 104, 128.
57. Reece Jones, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (London and New York: Verso, 2016), 5.
58. Keith Humphreys, “How Legalization Caused the Price of Marijuana to Collapse,” Washington Post, September 5, 2017, washingtonpost.com.
Conclusion: Democracy or the Police?
1. Michael Coard, “Police Killed More People in 2019 Than Bloods, Crips Combined,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 21, 2019, phillytrib.com.
2. Sam Adler-Bell, “How Police Unions Bully Politicians,” The New Republic, October 20, 2020, newrepublic.com.
3. Shane Bauer, “How a Deadly Police Force Ruled a City,” The New Yorker, November 16, 2020, newyorker.com.
4. Adler-Bell, “How Police Unions Bully Politicians.”
5. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 171.
6. “Criminal Justice Expenditures: Police, Corrections, and Courts,” Urban Institute, urban.org; Carlos Ballesteros, “Chicago Has Nearly Tripled Per Capita Police Spending since 1964, data show,” Injustice Watch, June 9, 2020, injusticewatch.org.
7. Robin D.G. Kelley, “Insecure: Policing under Racial Capitalism,” Spectre 1, n. 2 (Fall 2020), 25.
8. Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Reflections (New York: Schocken, 1986), 286.
9. “The Trump Administration: The First 100 Days,” Fraternal Order of Police, fop.net.
10. Michael German, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement,” Brennan Center for Justice, August 27, 2020, brennancenter.org.
11. Sam Levin, “California Police Worked with Neo-Nazis to Pursue ‘Anti-Racist’ Activists, Documents Show,” Guardian, February 9, 2018, theguardian.com.
12. Alex Zielinski, “Texts Show Protective Relationship between Portland Cops and Patriot Prayer,” Portland Mercury, February 14, 2019, portlandmercury.com.
13. Bill Chappell, “Police Officers Slashed Car Tires During Minneapolis Protests, Police Agencies Say,” NPR, June 9, 2020, npr.org.
14. Dee J. Hall, “Militia Member Says Kenosha Police Sought to Push Protesters toward Them on Night of Deadly Shootings,” Wisconsin Watch, September 5, 2020, wisconsinwatch
.org.
15. Simon Purdue, “The Other Epidemic: White Supremacists in Law Enforcement,” Open Democracy, August 6, 2020, opendemocracy.net.
16. Melissa Gira Grant, “Far-Right Militias Are Learning Impunity from the Cops,” The New Republic, August 31, 2020, newrepublic.com.
17. W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 30, 16.
18. Mychal Denzel Smith, “Abolish the Police. Instead, Let’s Have Full Social, Economic, and Political Equality,” The Nation, April 9, 2015, thenation.com.
19. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition (Chicago: Haymarket, 2021).
Index
Abitabile, Michael P., 104
#abolishICE, 190, 203
abolition
as beginning with breaking police power, 153
border abolition, 209
consequences of, 210
described, 151–5, 179, 193, 229
examples of, 134
history of, 11–13
risks of partial abolition, 153
role of, 11, 15
as topic of police reform, 92, 95
two-sided nature of, 129
what it isn’t, 151
abolition democracy, 12, 13–14, 25, 224–5, 226
abolitionist sanctuary, 207, 208–9
accountability, 34, 43, 63, 64, 81, 86, 87, 88, 90, 93, 96, 100, 108, 109, 114, 115, 117, 133, 143–4, 174, 213
Act 10 (Wisconsin), 116
Adler-Bell, Sam, 111–12, 124, 215
AFL-CIO
American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), 202
calls to expel police from ranks of, 112, 113
calls to pressure police unions from within, 113, 117
Águilas del Desierto (Desert Eagles), 184–5, 188, 206
Alexander, Michelle, 65–6, 188
alternatives, to policing, 137–45, 154, 179, 228–9
American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), 196
American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), 202
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
law enforcement units in, 120
recruiting of cops by, 102
American Indian Movement, 134–5, 139
American Legion, 100
anti-bias training, 85
anti-immigrant movements, 195, 197, 200
anti-migrant arguments, 196–7
anti-migrant backlash, 187
anti-migrant legislation, 188, 204–5
anti-migrant rhetoric, 195
Anti Police-Terror Project, 142
anti-violence advocacy, 143, 144, 146
Arbery, Ahmaud, 5, 19
Arizona
anti-migrant legislation (SB 1070) (2010), 204
Repeal Coalition, 205
Arthur, Rob, 49
Asayish (Internal Security Forces) (Syria), 164–5
Association of Flight Attendants, 112–13
Audre Lorde Project, 144
Austin Police Association, 124
Austin Police Department, 94
autodefensas, 172
Axon (formerly Taser International), 83
Azeez, Hawzhin, 164–5
“back the blue,” 227
bad date lines, 143
Badges without Borders (Schrader), 42
Baldwin, James, 3, 43, 177, 229
Bannon, Steve, 195–6, 198
Barry Goldwater bombing range, 183
Bauer, Shane, 214, 215
Bay Area, police budget cuts in, 94
Bay Area Rapid Transit, officer killing of Oscar Grant, 34
Bay Area Women against Rape, 143
Bayley, David, 63–4, 65
Beam, Louis, 40
Becerra, Cecilia Sáenz, 205
Belew, Kathleen, 201, 223
Bender, Lisa, 2, 131
benevolent associations, 99, 101, 102–3, 106, 152, 213, 214
Benjamin, Walter, 35, 218
Benjamine, Ruha, 148
Between the World and Me (Coates), 22
Bicking, Dave, 85, 133
Biden, Joe, 29, 88, 189, 193, 203
binding arbitration, 102, 108, 110, 122
Black codes, 13, 23–4, 26, 40
Black Legion, 100
Black Lives Matter (BLM)
according to John McNesby, 98
attack of protesters by white vigilantes, 21
Austin, Texas protest by, 8
formation of, 4
as overrepresented in police killings, 48
police as looking on as armed fascists attack, 221
Trump’s thinly veiled threat directed at, 219
Black-on-Black violence, 29
Black Panther Party, 133, 139, 140, 158, 175, 181
Black people
chokeholds as used on, 85
media treatment of after Hurricane Katrina, 22
as overrepresented in police killings, 48
police departments as refusing to hire, 105
resistance by in police killings, 49
risk in being in White neighborhoods, 50
as three times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts (in US), 47
transformation of in courtroom and media when murdered by police, 41
white fear of, 103
Black Reconstruction in America (Du Bois), 12, 23
Black Visions Collection, 130, 132, 133
Blackwater, 43, 223
Blake, Jacob, 9, 20
Bloods, 139
Bloomberg, Michael, 213
“blue coup,” 64, 214
“blue flu,” 9, 103, 124, 213
Blue Lives Matter, 41, 111, 114, 148, 222
blue wall of silence, 72–3, 77, 152
body cameras, 74, 80, 81–3, 84, 91
border
as creating violence, 209–10
history of, 199
role of, 195, 211
border abolition, 209
border policing, 39–41, 188, 195, 199, 201, 204
border wall, 186, 189, 196
Borjas, George, 197
Bouie, Jamelle, 83
Brantley, Nola, 61
Bratton, Bill, 42, 105, 181
Brennan Center, 220
Bring the War Home (Belew), 201
British policing, history of, 25, 38
broken windows policing, 26, 42, 65, 74, 85, 86, 90, 105, 144, 149, 181
Brooks, Rayshard, 8, 84, 113
Brown, John, 14
Brown, Mike, 4, 15, 21, 28, 50, 78, 84, 98, 118, 229
Brown Berets, 139
Brucato, Ben, 81–2
Bryan, William (“Roddie”), 19
Burge, Jon, 75
Bush, George W., 185, 189
Butler, Octavia, 228
Cabral, Sam, 111
Calderón, Felipe, 170–1
California
Anti Police-Terror Project in Oakland, 142
Bay Area Women against Rape, 143
declaration of schools as “sanctuary” from law enforcement in San Francisco, 5
police budget cuts in Bay Area, 94
police killing of Kelly Thomas in Fullerton, 54
police killing of Oscar Grant in Oakland, 4, 34, 72, 155, 159
police prostitution ring case in Oakland, 61
Proposition 34, 146
school districts eliminating contracts for school police in Oakland, 5
settling cases of police brutality in LA, 69
spending on police in LA, 69, 216
study of police department’s use of body cameras in Rialto, 81
violence of police department in Vallejo, 214–15
Camden Police Department (New Jersey), radical restructuring of, 149–50
Camp, Jordan, 42
Campus Antifascist Network (CAN), 145
campus police
efforts to abolish, 145
history of, 33–4
Canada
>
immigration and deportation policy in, 206
No One Is Illegal (Vancouver), 205–6
Canales, Vince, 109
Cano, Alondra, 2, 3
capitalism
abolishment of as necessary for abolishment of police, 45
police as most indispensable foot soldiers of, 159
private property as precondition of, 165
racial capitalism, 36, 105, 106, 121, 150, 176, 219
a world without police as requiring a world without capitalism, 226
Caraway, Kooper, 113
carceral feminism, 146
Casebolt, Eric, 21
Castile, Philando, 2, 119
Cato Institute
and police reform, 114
on sexual misconduct of police, 56
CBP (Customs and Border Protection), 184, 185, 189, 190, 191, 201
Center for Policing Equity, 90
Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right, 222
Chambers, Anna, 58
Chapman, Tracy, 65
Chauvin, Derek, 2–3, 5, 50, 84, 90, 112
Chicago Police Department
degrees of brutality of, 30–1
planting of drugs and guns by, 218
child deportation, 192
child protective services (CPS), 147
chokeholds
as topic of police reform, 80, 85–6, 93
use of, 89, 90
Christie, Chris, 150
Christopher Commission, 77
Citizen (app), 23
Citizen’s Local Alliance for a Safer Philadelphia (CLASP), 141
civil asset forfeiture, 217
Civil Defense Forces (HPC) (Syria), 164–5
civilian review boards/oversight, 17, 80, 87–8, 92, 93, 103, 104, 107, 109, 213, 214, 215, 224
Clark, Jamar, 2, 133
class, race as inextricably linked to, 4
Clinton, Bill, 15, 29, 32, 186–7, 188, 189, 210
Clinton, Hillary, 29, 188, 192–3, 210
Clover, Joshua, 2
Coalition against Police Brutality, 144
Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar, 133
Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 22, 44
collective bargaining, 112
Colombia, police reform in, 180
Colston, Edward, 7
Columbus, Christopher, 6
Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Taxes (CLEAT), 115
Common Ground Collective, 175
Communities against Rape and Abuse (CARA), 143–4
Communities United against Police Brutality (CUAPB), 85, 132–3
community/communities
as antidote to police, 155
building of without police, 127–56