With heavy hearts, we stand alongside millions as we mourn the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Sean Reed. They have been added to the long list of Black people forcibly taken from us, and we are in solidarity with all those feeling the weight of these losses and those in the fight against the systems that killed them.
As we feel the pain of this senseless killing, we note how the vigilante killing of Ahmaud is an iteration of policing. CR defines policing as a social relationship made up of a set of violent practices that are empowered by the state to not only enforce the law but also maintain social control through the use of force. Ahmaud’s extra-legal execution is then not only a blatant act of hatred, but also sadly no outlier, and rather an action that falls in line with the inherent punitivity of the white supremacist systems of criminalization and oppression that fracture our communities every single day.
Although Ahmaud’s murder was committed in February, actions have only just been taken to even address its occurrence, solely as a result of the video being released and the subsequent massive community outcry. Because these acts of violence are fundamental in a society that strives to dispossess, disappear, and kill marginalized communities – particularly Black and Brown people, poor people, unhoused people, women, and queer and trans people – those in power will fight tooth and nail against relinquishing their grip on social, economic, and political control that relies completely on our subjugation.
We also mourn Breonna Taylor and Sean Reed’s murders at the hands of police, and we note that these too are not deviations from the normal function of policing, but a strict adherence to it. As prison industrial complex abolitionists, we understand the intrinsically violent role that policing plays and that these seemingly acute acts of violence are manifestations and continuations of chronic, interwoven structures of oppression. This system is not broken for undergirding these killings, but functioning exactly as designed, and will never be the provider of justice in response to our tragedy. We know that, in each of these cases from Ahmaud Arbery to Breonna Taylor to Sean Reed, no matter the potential charges or convictions that may come, true justice will come from abolishing policing and the prison industrial complex at large, from eliminating the societal structures that fuel and are upheld by white supremacy, and bolstering the structures that meet communities’ needs to flourish.
In this moment of grief and righteous rage, Critical Resistance would like to offer a few resources to bolster our efforts in abolishing policing and white-supremacy. On our website you can find numerous organizing tools and resources on challenging policing, including CR’s full definition of policing, along with a complete downloadable workshop on the abolition of policing with a timeline of the development of policing as an oppressive institution throughout US history, as well as sample pieces of CR’s work in the Oakland Power Projects, developing alternatives to calling and relying on police in public health crisis and emergencies.
Throughout this all-too-routine pain, there is always resistance. Be it community and family members coming together to make their voices heard, networks of community defense springing into action, or community organizers coming together to envision community care, people are taking a stand for their self-determination. The onslaught of state-sanctioned violence loses its dominance when communities build and assert theirs, and we move forward standing in solidarity with these movements for people power and collective liberation.
In solidarity,
Critical Resistance
Resources and Historical Study on Policing,
Anti-Black Vigilantism, and Resistance
Mabel and Robert F. Williams collection in the Freedom Archives. Rich archival materials exploring the organizing and legacy of Mabel and Robert F Williams and Black self-defense organizing in the 1950s and 1960s in North Carolina.
Geronimo Ji Jaga on Black Liberation clip from Freedom Archives. G discusses SNCC organizing throughout the country, working with the Deacons of Defense (Louisiana), the Black Panthers - but SNCC leads study and the political development of much of the radical Black movement. G also discusses growing up in the Black Nation and fighting the Klan.
