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Grassroots Donation Power!
Your grassroots donations this month have stretched far beyond our dreams! Together we have raised over $90,000. Ready to chip in? There's still time. Donate here. ([link removed]) Every gift helps us advance abolition. Thank you!
Mural by @LaDimeUna for on 4400 Telegraph Ave, North Oakland, California.
Dear Critical Resistance supporters, friends and comrades,

Near the end of May 2020, uprisings set off around the world uplifting a range of calls to remedy state violence and racial capitalism. At this juncture, our communities are mounting strong demands for structural change, including strategies to defund policing entities, cancel contracts and eliminate entire police programs and initiatives. Ten years ago holding a sign that read “Abolish Police” at a protest garnered blank stares or even hostility. This year abolition is becoming a household term. In this moment of upheaval, we examine how a layered set of conditions, beliefs and triggers have cooked this particular moment of rebellion and deep shifting in order to analyze the development and growth of the abolitionist movement today.

This message contains a partial roundup of anti-policing updates and resistance from across the US. Below you will find analysis on federal repression and local resistance unfolding in Portland, some inspiring victories and advancements of local struggles, and an opportunity for public healthworkers to take action by signing on to a national non-collaboration pledge. Ready for more reading? Go to our website to check out our analysis of the conditions, beliefs and triggers of this moment on our here. ([link removed])

You can also find two new organizing tools for resisting policing in Oakland ([link removed]) created by our Oakland Chapter members: a mid-year review on policing in Oakland and two new videos on abolishing policing here ([link removed]) . Keep fighting, keep building!

In Solidarity,

Critical Resistance


** Public health professionals, take action!
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The End Police Violence Collective, authors of the American Public Health Association's 2018 policy statement "Addressing Law Enforcement as a Public Health Issue ([link removed]) ," have put together a Pledge of Non Collaboration for all public health workers to sign, committing to not collaborating with law enforcement as we co-create a world without policing. The goal is to have at least 2000 signatories by early August, making it clear that people in public health are taking a firm stance: we will never police our way to public health. Sign the pledge at tinyurl.com/publichealthpledge, pass it on to others, and share on social media using the hashtag #SignThePledge.


** Victories to Build On:
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Across the country, communities are mobilizing on cities’ budgets to divest from policing and invest in radical, life-affirming infrastructure. This organizing is generating countless collective resources of radical care, mutual aid and political education and agency, defying across borders and geographic lines manufactured and maintained by the prison industrial complex and capitalism. In this work, we are beginning to see more and more victories sprouting:


** Cops out of our schools!
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Oakland, CA
School communities K-12 and in universities mobilizing to cancel contracts with policing. The fight to get cops out of schools has been a struggle in the US and in California in particular for decades. We want to celebrate the tremendous victory that The Black Organizing Project (BOP) ([link removed]) won in Oakland, CA with the George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department.

Oakland Unified was the only school district in Alameda County to have its own police force and spent more than $6 million annually on the force. OUSD cops were even headquartered in West Oakland at the former Cole Middle School, ironically the site of one of the most successful school-based restorative justice programs in the country.
For BOP the fight effectively started with the murder of Raheim Brown Jr. on January 22, 2011 by Oakland Unified School Police outside Skyline High School. After almost a decade of organizing BOP launched “The People’s Plan for Police Free Schools” in 2019. Critical Resistance Oakland chapter has been fortunate to be able to support this campaign as it has developed and grown over the years towards this 2020 victory! Learn more about BOP here ([link removed]) , and check out CR Oakland's Midyear Review on Policing in Oakland as well as videos on how to abolish policing here ([link removed]) !



** Portland, OR
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Since 2017, theCare Not Cops ([link removed]) campaign, founded by CR Portland, has fought to dismantle the Portland Police Bureau and successfully for reduce its budget and scope.


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Each year, Care Not Cops focuses strategically on preventing increases in police officers, technology, and community policing programs. Amid heightened calls to defund the Portland Police, the City Council voted on June 16 to reduce the police budget by $15 million, effectively eliminating 84 positions from the force. The fight continues! Stay tuned and follow Care Not Cops on Instagram for updates. ([link removed])


** Keep up the pressure!
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**
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** Minneapolis, MN
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Reclaim the Block ([link removed]) is working to force the city’s Charter Commission to remove the Minneapolis Police Department from the city’s charter, effectively paving the way for defunding and disbanding the force.



** Seattle, WA
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Two grassroots organizations in Seattle, Decriminalize Seattle ([link removed]) and King County Equity Now ([link removed]) , have outlined a 4 point road map ([link removed]) to defunding the Seattle Police Department. Hundreds of organizations and 35,000 individuals have signed a petition uplifting their demands to defund the police department by at least 50%, reallocate funds to community led health and safety systems and releasing protesters arrested during the uprisings without charges.



** Nashville, TN
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Nashville People’s Budget Coalition ([link removed]) pointed out that while the Metro Council failed to defund their police department, their organizing has still produced victories and they remain committed to the fight. Hundreds of people showed up to Council meetings to voice their support for defunding the police. This strong showing moved several council members to support the amendments.


** All Eyes on Portland:
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In Portland, Oregon, the federal government has deployed Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in what can only be described as a counterinsurgency attack, quite reminiscent of 1992 Los Angeles when this kind of city-based counter-insurgency program was developed. Agents wearing camouflage without clear identification or insignia and riding in unmarked rented minivans have snatched individuals off the street-- only to hold them at the federal building for hours before releasing them. None have been told why they were being detained. The agents in Portland are ostensibly under orders from Trump to protect federal property including courthouses and monuments. However, the agents have proven that they are also there to police dissent in any form-- even if local governments never invited them and have explicitly called for them to leave.

This particular moment is indicative of an evolution of policing.

The CBP is ideally suited to this kind of counterinsurgency. They have always been empowered to grab people off the street and detain them and have been wreaking that havoc on immigrant and migrant communities since their inception. It is important here to make the connections between the US global militarized project to the squashing of movements within the US that are in solidarity with colonized communities around the globe.

This tightening of militarized policing and counter-insurgency is also doubling down on institutionalized white-supremacy. The state of Oregon was originally founded as a “white utopia” and a clause prohibiting Black people from living within its borders was written in the new state’s 1859 constitution. Portland is still known as the whitest big city in the US, and Black communities have suffered under the city’s accelerated gentrification and subsequent displacement.

In the words of Walidah Imarisha, Portland has perfected neo-liberal racism with political progressiveness cloaking the facilitation of white dominance in business, housing and culture. Portland has been the site of numerous rallies by fascist and white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys, and Oregon more broadly is known to be a haven to white supremacist militia groups, such as the Bundy's who staged the 2014 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff. A number of social media threads and memes have drawn comparisons between armed militia members in camouflage threatening counter protesters and armed federal agents in camouflage snatching protesters off the street. The similarities are clear.

We also need to recognize that much of what we see happening in Portland and the general expansion of federal policing powers was made possible by lawmakers in the aftermath of 9-11 through the Patriot Act which created the Department of Homeland Security. When Trump declared a national emergency due to the pandemic, it triggered Title 42 pandemic law which gives CBP and ICE more authority, facilitated through the vague and broad authorities given to those agencies post 9-11.

Of course, the federal policing of dissent is not new, the most infamous example being COINTELPRO.
P.S. We have new Building People Power shirts, ([link removed]) hoodies, crewneck sweaters and totes! This special design is a collaboration between Critical Resistance and Dom Villeda of Treat U Nice signs, originally made for the building at 4400 Telegraph in Oakland, now wearable for you! Check them out: www.criticalresistance.org/gear ([link removed])
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Donate to our Summer Fundraising Campaign by July 31st!
And save the date for our first Donor Forum on August 7th...
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You can…
* Donate generously. We’ll put amounts of $15, $50, $500, or $50,000 to best use! You can give online ([link removed]) or send a check in the mail.

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