On this third episode exploring the Misfit Twelve, Jesse & Matt will assess Alex S. Vitale’s book The End of Policing, which is equal parts a love letter to liberals—pleading for them to end their thumb-from-mouth habit with reformist politics, while also opening up a doorway to abolitionist thought. Published in 2017 by Verso Books to small fanfare, this book-length plea has rapidly flickered in-and-out of print since the George Floyd Uprisings of 2020; and so pressing is the topic and demand to #DefundThePolice that The End of Policing has been downloaded over 200,000 times from Verso’s website. Our co-hosts weigh the pros and cons of the book’s argument, audience-angle and whether it offers a bonafide vision of a world without police, or consider if it’s just another leftward book diagramming the corpse of liberalism instead. Our co-hosts will then use the book as a launch-pad to other notions not discussed, but which circulate unseen, above or below the subtext of The Carceral State while imagining other ways of being free from the policeman inside our heads.
Mentioned In This Episode:
The End of Policing (2017) by Alex S. Vitale from Verso Books
Doug Henwood’s Behind the News with Alex Vitale
The (Aaron) Bastani Factor on Novara Media with Alex Vitale
Michael Moore’s Rumble with Alex Vitale
Our Enemies in Blue (Originally Published in 2004) by Kristian Williams from AK Press
“What are police for? [. . .] Everybody thinks they know. But to assume that the police exist to enforce the law or fight crime is akin to beginning an analysis of military policy with the premise that armies exist to repel invasions. The ends an institution pursues are not always the same as those it claims to pursue. [. . .] Control of the lower classes has been a function of policing at every point since the institution’s birth, and has served as one of the major determinants of its development. [. . .] This is my principal recommendation, then: we must recognize the possibility of a world without police.”
Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016) - To watch a rough recording of it (now that it’s momentary “release” was taken down by 13 museum institutions after throwing a bone to the proles), you can go to the following link on YouTube: Watch Here.
David Shields’ experimental documentary Marshawn Lynch: A History (2019)
Black Planet: Facing Race During An NBA Season by David Shields printed by Crown Publishers in 1999.
In NYC: #OccupyCityHall to #DefundNYPD by $1 Billion this year.
Mike Davis’ celebration and critique of Occupy Wall Street in the Really Open University: “Wall Street Through the Augmented Eyes of ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper”
Jonathan Smucker’s Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals published by AK Press in 2017
Amy Goodman & Democracy Now: “Defund Police: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Says Budgets Wrongly Prioritize Cops Over Schools, Hospitals”
Memorable quote from the interview: “The police almost never have to incur layoffs. They never have to incur budget cuts, because they are seen as the public policy of last resort.”
“Five Myths About Policing” - by Alex Vitale:
Myth No. 1: Police spend most of their time fighting crime.
Myth No. 2: A diverse police force leads to better policing.
Myth No. 3: Implicit-bias training can root out racism in policing.
Myth No. 4: Community policing empowers communities
Myth No. 5: The police can effectively help with mental health crises.
Clarissa Jan-Lim in Buzzfeed: “Three Cops Have Been Fired After Their Racist Rants About Black People Were Caught On Tape” - {Once again: a very clear reminder that—even during the 99% of the job that is boredom—cops can still hurl racial epithets with the best of the KKK}
Khaleda Rahman in Newsweek: “Police Violated Human Rights of George Floyd Protesters 125 Times: Amnesty International”
David Graeber’s meditation about why the military (like the police) is an occupation that beckons to rural white kids when they’ve been locked out of access to ivy league educations and universities: the desire for wanting nobility as seen in his discussion with frank thomas on C-Span: The Democracy Project.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition on the Intercepted Podcast: Part I
Part II of The Intercept Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore Where She Describes Her Notion “Lawfare”
The Hollywood Reporter: “Jon Stewart Says Police 'Patrol the Border Between the Two Americas'”
Max Rameau and Netfa Freeman in the Black Agenda Report: “Community Control Vs. Defunding the Police: A Critical Analysis”
A better context & more fleshed out description of Rameau and Freeman’s end goal ideas can be found in the This Is Hell Podcast interview with them: Listen Here.
Kyle Burke in Jacobin: “The Police Know Guerilla Warfare”
Alex S. Vitale’s 2017 Article in Jacobin: “Police and the Liberal Fantasy”
Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter - Edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton - Published by Verso Books in 2016
A Memorable Passage from the Anthology: “#Blacklivesmatter And Global Visions Of Abolition: An Interview With Patrisse Cullors”
“An abolitionist society is not based on capital. I don’t think that you can have a capitalist system and also have an abolitionist system. I think an abolitionist society is rooted in the needs of the community first. It’s rooted in providing for and supporting the self-determination of communities. It’s a society that has no borders, literally. It’s a society that’s based on interdependence and the connection of all living beings. It’s a society that is determined to facilitate a life that is full of respect, a life that is full of honoring and praising those most impacted by oppression.”
#8ToAbolition: Demands, Claims and Solutions
Tom Perkins in The Guardian: “Revealed: Police Unions Spend Millions to Influence Policy in Biggest US Cities”
Ava DuVernay’s Brilliant & Bracing Netflix Documentary 13th (2016)
George Lakoff’s Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate - printed by Chelsea Green Publishing in 2004
Peter Crimmins in PBS WHYY: “Camden Residents: City Not a Model for Defunding Police”
One of Rosa Luxemburg’s major insights & expansions of Karl Marx’s ideas was that capitalism’s ability to transcend limitations always had to involve capitalism’s colonialist drive into forcing the global south into becoming new markets: as seen in Hamid Dabashi’s article in Al-Jazeera: “Rosa Luxemburg: The Unsung Hero of Postcolonial Theory”
Amy Goodman & Democracy Now: “Angela Davis on Abolition, Calls to Defund Police, Toppled Racist Statues & Voting in 2020 Election”
Ian Schwartz in RealClearPolitics: “Cornel West: America Is A Failed Social Experiment, Neoliberal Wing of Democratic Party Must Be Fought”
Michael Moore on Twitter (May 30th, 2020): “The dominant image on display tonight: The American Experiment is dead. Killed by the collective knee of white power, white privilege, and white ownership of property/wealth/wage-slave labor. America the Beautiful? We never repented for our Original Sins of slavery & genocide.”
Kai Heron in Roar Magazine: “Capitalist Catastrophism”