Rustbelt Abolition Radio #10: Beyond Policing

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In this episode we take a critical look at the liberal discourse of police reform, which has increasingly gained prominence amidst the ever-recurring specter of racist police violence, and especially in the wake of black rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore, and the intensification of North American Black liberation struggles these rebellions galvanized.

Alex Vitale, Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and author of The End of Policing, speaks about the ways liberalism works to shore up the violence of policing through cosmetic, technocratic reforms, while failing to interrogate the origins and nature of police as a coercive instrument of state power, wielded to reproduce the social inequalities inherent to racial capitalism. We also speak with Charlene Carruthers, national director of Black Youth Project 100 and board member for the women of color reproductive justice collective SisterSong, on organizing through a Black queer feminist lens and pushing towards a society that’s organized around community, rather than punishment.