Truthdig
'Sanctuary Cities' and Black Community Control of the Police
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sanctuary_cities_and_black_community_con
trol_of_the_police_20170401/
Posted on Apr 1, 2017
By Glen Ford / Black Agenda Report
(https://blackagendareport.com/sanctuary_cities_community_control)
"These cities provide no 'sanctuary' from police predation for people of
color," according to Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report. (Joe Brusky / CC 2.0
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/40969298@N05/15551420731/) )
Advocates of Black community control of police need to do some serious
examination of the swirl of issues surrounding the fight over "sanctuary
cities." Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week upped the ante,
threatening to withhold not only future federal funding to cities that
refuse to vigorously enforce federal immigration laws, but to claw back
(http://www.zerohedge.com/print/591845) Justice Department grants
previously awarded to resistant municipalities. Although there is no
question that police-oppressed communities have a huge stake in resisting
the Trump administration's anti-immigrant juggernaut, the demand for Black
community control of police must not be compromised in the shuffle and
scuffle between Democrats and Republicans.
At the heart of the issue is the federal role in law enforcement.
Traditional "civil rights" forces have long sought to curb police abuse
through appeals for federal intervention, including demands for cut-offs in
Washington's aid to local departments. Everybody knows the dance by now:
community outrage over police terror is channeled into the U.S. Justice
Department, which promises investigations and the possibility of federal
suits, sometimes culminating in "consent decrees" that imposed limited
reforms on the offending department. When the reforms fail to stop the cops
from behaving like an occupying army in the Black community - as in
Cleveland, which has been subjected to two consent decrees in the 21st
century-repeat the process.
The profoundly conservative civil rights establishment has only one response
to systemic white supremacy at the local level: call in the feds, a
time-consuming process that is designed to dissipate dissent and diverts
attention from the goal of community empowerment. Local police departments
have successfully evaded even their base-line responsibility to report the
number of civilians they kill every year to the FBI, whose estimate of the
national carnage is thought to be off by half. Black Richmond, Virginia,
congressman Bobby Scott got a bill passed, in 2000, that would have required
the collection of data on fatal encounters with police
(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/18/police-killings-government-
data-count) , with vague provisions for withholding funds for failure to do
so. But the law was allowed to quietly die in 2006. In December of 2014, in
the wake of the Ferguson rebellion, Scott's bill was reauthorized by
Congress, and was joined on the U.S. Senate side by a Cory Booker (D-NJ) and
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) bill that would provide grants
(http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ed-police-use-of-force-0602-st
ory.html) for "tip lines and hot lines" to allow the public to report to
the feds on police killings. However, Booker and Boxer did not push for
defunding of uncooperative departments.
Defunding cops is a non-starter among most Democrats and virtually all
Republicans-a political fact that further neuters the traditional,
call-in-the-feds response to police terror. However, starving the criminal
injustice system on the local level is a different story. Last year, the
Movement for Black Lives launched a nationwide campaign
(http://www.workers.org/2016/07/27/movement-for-black-lives-defund-and-disem
power-the-police/#.WOAHn2Tyu2x) to dramatize the huge imbalance in the
amounts spent on local Black community housing, health and education needs,
and maintenance of the police state. In this context, defunding the police
is a matter of community priorities and empowerment, rather than an appeal
for the national government to set things right.
The democratic solution to police oppression lies in the exercise of
self-determination through Black community control of the police. When local
community representatives control the budgetary, hiring and firing process,
appeals to a "higher" authority are neither necessary nor desirable.
Donald Trump's war against immigrants is a fascist-inspired offensive that
is inseparable from his plans to forcefully pacify Black America. Back in
January, Trump vowed to "send in the feds
(http://wgntv.com/2017/03/28/head-of-chicagos-police-union-meets-with-pres-t
rump-leaders-at-white-house/) " to tame Chicago. This week, he met with the
head of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, who was eager both to enforce
oppressive immigration laws and to "reduce the gun violence in the city of
Chicago"-through application of more massive police violence.
Former president Obama's position is no different than Trump's; his rhetoric
is simply softer. Obama's Justice Department announced, last July, that it
would withhold federal grants
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/sanctuary-cities-jeff-sessio
ns.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollect
ion=us®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgty
pe=sectionfront) to local jurisdictions that refuse to provide immigration
data to federal agencies. In other words, he set up the machinery for
Trump's crackdown-after racking up a record as the champion deporter in U.S.
history.
Solidarity with immigrant communities is crucial to the struggle for Black
liberation in the United States. However, that does not mean making common
cause with the Democratic Party, which attempts to portray itself as a
friend of immigrants, and whitewashes the fact that Trump's offensive
against the undocumented is essentially Obama's policy with a meaner, orange
face. It certainly does not call for an alliance with the likes of mayors
Rahm Emanuel, of Chicago, and Bill di blasio, of New York, whose police wage
relentless war against Black neighborhoods. These cities provide no
"sanctuary" from police predation for people of color, immigrant or native
born, and it is a damnable lie to pretend otherwise. Sanctuary is only
possible when the cops are directly answerable to the people, through Black
community control of the police.
Hopefully, these first two months of Donald Trump has taught folks what they
should have learned under Obama: that calling in the feds is no substitute
for building people's power. It's often just the opposite.
My Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932-2017)
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