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Author: Matteo Tamburini, WPJC Board Member Today's edition of the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, one of the two newspapers with the widest circulation, has the following headline: "Usa, Trump celebra Colombo: 'Un grande italiano'. E si scaglia contro gli estremisti che minano la sua eredità." [English Translation] "USA, Trump celebrates Columbus: 'A great Italian'. And he attacks the extremists who undermine his legacy." I wrote them the following reply, in Italian (the English translation follows): "Spett.le redazione di Repubblica, Nel titolo del vostro articolo di oggi, non si capisce bene di chi sia la descrizione si 'estremisti' diretta a chi 'mina l'eredità di Cristoforo Colombo'. A usare quel termine siete voi, o state citando Trump? In quanto Italiano DOC (nato a Firenze, cresciuto a Pistoia), e anche in quanto cittadino statunitense che da un decennio insegna matematica in una università' di Nativi Americani, devo dire che continua a infastidirmi il vostro accanimento contro una rivalutazione del lascito storico del colonialismo europeo. E' cosi' difficile vedere le cose da un altro punto di vista? O anche solo ammettere che possa esistere un altro punto di vista? Visti i tempi che corrono, sarebbe opportuno celebrare altri eroi (che certo non mancano), e cercare di coltivare un po' più di umiltà nei confronti della nostra storia. Un cordiale saluto, Matteo Tamburini iscritto all'AIRE del Comune di Pistoia Residente a Bellingham, stato di Washington, Stati Uniti d'America [English translation] Dear editors of 'La Repubblica', In the article you published today it isn't clear who is using the term 'extremists', directed at those who might 'undermine the legacy of Christopher Columbus'. Are you using that word, or are you quoting Trump? As an Italian (born in Florence, raised in Pistoia), and also as a US citizen who has spent the last decade working at a university run by Native Americans, I must say that I find your ongoing aversion to any re-evaluation of effects of European colonialism quite vexing. Is it so difficult to see things from another point of view? Or even to admit that another point of view is possible? Given the times we're living in, we might be better off celebrating different heroes (there is no shortage of those), and to trying to cultivate a greater degree of humbleness in regards to our own history. Kind regards, Matteo Tamburini - - - - - - As part of my enforced isolation during the pandemic, I have been doing more research about the history of Italian Americans' path to becoming white. As part of my Capoeira practice, I turned what I learned (mostly from reading Dixie’s Italians: Sicilians, Race, and Citizenship in the Jim Crow Gulf South by Jessica Barbata Jackson, LSU Press, 2020) into a poem in Portuguese - included below with English translation. Happy Indigenous People's Day!
Radio host jim justice speaks with Damani Johnson, the Whatcom Peace & Justice Center's 2020 Rosemary & Howard Harris Lifetime Peacemaker Award honoree. Damani is the WWU's College of Humanities & Social Studies Program Director for the Munro Institute for Civil Education & editor in chief of the African Journal of Governance & Development. In 1988, Damani was on the Advisory Committee for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Presidential Campaign. He was also on the Steering Committee of the Washington State Rainbow Coalition from 1988-1992. He's been part of the Whatcom Human Rights Taskforce & offered week long educational sessions on Civil Rights in Washington over the past several summers. Listen in to find out more about all the work Damani has done to bring people of diverse backgrounds together to learn about others.
Posted on July 21, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: massdef@nlg.org The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) National Office is launching a hotline for activists and lawyers to report incidents of federal repression, such as FBI “door-knocks” at activists’ homes, grand jury investigations and subpoenas, and any other federal law enforcement efforts to undermine civil rights, including federal grab squads and the use of unidentified federal agents to police protests. The line is live at: 212-679-2811. Since May, the NLG has continued to support the movement for Black lives, organizing to support legal defense efforts and provide Legal Observers for demonstrations. In the last week, we have seen the use of anti-protest shock troops by the federal government, such as Portland, where federal grab squads have arrested activists and taken them away from demonstrations in unmarked vans. A memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suggests that these officers are acting under the auspices of DHS and are members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). This is a unit typically tasked with high level law enforcement operations and it is formed under US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). These officers are acting under direct orders from the Trump Administration and Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf. The use of BORTAC to disrupt activism is a recent escalation by the federal government, which has also used the National Guard, FBI, and Secret Service in order to violently quell protests. These efforts come in combination with an aggressive political and legal strategy labeling ‘antifa’ a domestic terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors are also filing criminal charges against activists throughout the country. The NLG Federal Defense Hotline will allow callers to have privileged conversations with attorneys, and to receive attorney referrals, know-your-rights information, and resources for responding to grand jury investigations and subpoenas. Inquiries about the line can be sent to massdef@nlg.org. The line is staffed by attorneys organizing with the NLG, and will remain active as long as federal prosecution efforts continue. The National Lawyers Guild, whose membership includes lawyers, legal workers, jailhouse lawyers, and law students, was formed in 1937 as the United States’ first racially-integrated bar association to advocate for the protection of constitutional, human and civil rights. Related: Author: Marii Herlinger, WPJC Intern  Imagine a world where Trayvon Martin was offered a ride home instead.
This sentence stopped me in my tracks last week. I found it in the last line of a poem (the author of which I was unable to find despite careful internet combing) and it took me several days to realize that these twelve short words hold the key to an abolitionist future. The longer I have the privilege of learning about and working toward peace and justice, the more convinced I am of the power of imagination and joy in creating a future of liberation. James Baldwin writes: “in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand—and one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible.” Angela Davis echoes this by saying “you have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” Assata Shakur writes: “part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It’s really working to create something beautiful.” And Audre Lord describes the “joy in living” as “one of our most potent weapons.” At the intersection of all of these quotes, from four essential American voices, is the notion that joy and imagination play an integral role in the movement for peace and justice. Imagining a world where Trayvon Martin could have been offered a ride home instead — and, in turn, imagining a world without police — requires us to envision a world we’ve never lived in. And this act, of striving for a future which we have never tasted, can only be sustained if its source is positive — if its source is joy. My sister and I often distinguish between the songs we like and the songs we love by asking each other whether the song “fills us up” when we listen to it. In these moments, we are recognizing music as a source from which joy springs and sustains us. I am learning that it’s not only a healthy personal practice to “follow your delight,” as adrienne maree brown would say (here is a link to a Black-owned book supplier selling brown’s book “Emergent Strategy,” about how joy intersects with social activism), but it is in fact a critical element of effective resistance. In the same way that anger and individualism are drains to the soul, joy and collectivism are powerful nourishment. Applying this to the current canvas of political and social activity, at the same time that the struggle for Black lives is receiving a record level of national and international attention, it also seems to be exhibiting many signs of a social media trend. And in the middle of a pandemic, our streets and physical workplaces — historically common sites of social change — have undergone rapid obsolescence. So how do we create a movement which grows in strength despite this time of social distancing? One which survives our waning attention spans and the grab-and-go design of internet culture? How do we open up a third space, necessitated by a pandemic and the inability to gather, where imagination and joy are the pillars of our interaction? When I say that our source of resistance must be positive, I’m not talking about positivity as a personality trait. I’m not saying you have to be or act happy all the time. Grief, rage, and discouragement have important places in this work, too. I’m saying that in order to engage in the work of worldmaking, we must allow ourselves to be continually revitalized by that which fills us up. (Within the movement, Black folks are expected to achieve this while simultaneously fighting for their basic rights — white people must remember this when we think we're experiencing burnout from the work.) Adrienne maree brown names some of these sources of joy: good sex, delicious food, a fulfilling community, life’s small coincidences, and love. At the center of revolutionary power is radical love. And in a capitalist system where we are taught to look out for ourselves first and foremost, love in essentially any form is already radical. I wanted to write about joy, imagination and love during this critical time when the movement for Black lives has gained more momentum than I have ever seen in my lifetime. It seems that much of the activism currently trending only emphasizes concrete action steps, such as donating, attending protests, reading books, watching documentaries, etcetera. While these are no doubt crucial, it feels important to me to also reflect on the more abstract needs of a revolution. White supremacy culture values objectivity, overworking, and neglecting self-care — joy interrupts that. White supremacy culture encourages power-hoarding, defensiveness, and the idea that there is only one right way — imagination interrupts that. White supremacy culture teaches us to be individualistic, self-serving, and distrustful of each other — love interrupts that. Therefore, joy, imagination and love are revolutionary tools which actively defy capitalism and white supremacy. They are not merely helpful but essential ingredients for a new and better world — ingredients which Black theorists, activists, women and trans women have been using for centuries. When James Baldwin, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis and Audre Lord wrote the words I quoted above, they were living in times that required them to imagine a world that then seemed unattainable. We have since heroized them for believing in the “impossible,” but they were never doing that alone. Their work was grounded in a collective vision, along with many people who may never have risen to fame but who were crucial in bringing us to the world we live in today. And, right now, we are being called into a movement that requires the same collective and constant (re)imagining that characterized the transformative epochs in which these people lived. Many of us, if we are white, are new to the concept of prison and police abolition. We must remember that Black organizers and activists have been envisioning it for a long time out of necessity. None of us have lived in a world without police (yet), so it is difficult to imagine what that world might look like. But, as Baldwin suggested, belief in the impossible must be a daily exercise. And, after all, how do we get good at anything? By practicing it constantly. We must rise each morning convinced by the viability of a future where our brothers and sisters and siblings aren’t being murdered in the streets. We must practice joy, practice imagination, practice love. In doing so, we free ourselves, and each other.  {Transcript}
Hi Baba, I’ve been driving around thinking about my Jewish studies class and trying to apply the information that I learned to my activism. I wanted to write you a letter telling you everything that I’ve learned this quarter and explain what I’m thinking about right now but I know you’re busy so I thought it’d be nice if I sent it in a voice note so you can listen to it on your way to work. And if we are being honest our best thinking is always done in the car on long drives anyways. Remember when you used to drive me to Cascade Ridge Elementary school every day? You poor single father, just driving my ass 45 minutes each way to and from school. Looking back on those times we spent talking in the car are some of my favorite memories. I remember when you used to ask me to envision what a free Palestine will look like. I don’t know if you know this but that’s actually a revolutionary tool that we learned about in my Critical Race Theory class, it’s called “decolonial imagination” and it’s a really important step towards liberation for colonized people. I’ve learned a lot by studying Jewish history this quarter and I found it really surprising to see how similar Palestinian identity was to Jewish identity. I want to acknowledge that I know I’m generalizing when I say “Jewish identity” since Jewish history is multifaceted and Mizrahi Jews have a much different history than European Jews do. Nonetheless, I’m going to assert that Palestinians have a lot that we can learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters as a whole. Which is why when I envision a free Palestine now, I look to Jewish history for examples of what we should and shouldn’t do in the future. We read a book by Hannah Arendt who’s an anti-Zionist holocaust survivor and scholar and she talked a lot about eternal anti-Semitism and how detrimental it was towards achieving true Jewish liberation. She says that, and I quote, “Jews concerned with the survival of their people would in a curious desperate misinterpretation hit on the consoling idea that anti-Semitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together, so that the assumption of eternal anti-Semitism would even imply an eternal guarantee of Jewish existence.” This really stuck out to me because we are beginning to experience this eternal victimization as well in the Palestinian community. A lot of Muslims, including Palestinians as you already know, justify the colonization of our land and genocide by saying that it was Allah’s will. But that's a cheap copout in my opinion, for both Jews and for Palestinians, because an eternal victimhood negates any responsibility from our oppressor. It places the blame on God and external factors which will always hold us back from achieving our liberation because we cannot contest the prophecy of Allah. It also negates any responsibility on our part, or on the Jews part, for how we have come to be in this position of eternal victimhood. I feel like I’m just beginning to actually understand the multi-dimensional history of anti-Semitism in Europe and I know that I still have a long ways to go but I’m going to give you a brief rundown of some of the major concepts that I’ve learned so we can look to them as an example for our own self-preservation. So as you know, Jews are a diasporic group of people. After their exile from Israel they lived all over the world but in Europe specifically they tried to preserve their Jewish identity by relatively staying separate from mainstream society. This manifested into two different major groups of Jewish people—Arendt uses the terms Jewish elite and the Jewish masses to describe them. The Jews who made up the Jewish masses at the time, were extremely poor but nonetheless were still granted certain privileges from the state. For example they were able to remain living in Jewish ghettos, which was actually wanted because it helped to preserve the Jewish identity. On the other hand, the paradox is that even though neither the Jewish elite, nor the members of the Jewish masses, wanted to be assimilated to European identity, the Jewish elite became aligned with the nation state. The elite were very interconnected to the banking system but not in the typical anti-Semitic trope that we immediately think of when we hear that. Jews were relatively apolitical because they didn’t want to assimilate to a Christian European identity, and at the time there was a major stigma around Christians handling money. So Jews, being the versatile group of diasporic people that they were, they filled that role and did it very well. The issues began to really arise when antisemitism became internalized in upper class Jews. The “elite Jews” were against the emancipation of the Jewish masses because they knew if the masses were emancipated into this seeming equality, then their privileges would be lost. So the Jewish masses and the Jewish elite at this point were pitted against each other. Up until then the Jewish religion was an incredibly diverse population. But because of the Reich’s racialization of Jews as a whole, they became an ethno-religious group of people in Europe. When I started this class I opened up with my qualms about Judaism being considered an ethno-religion because of how diverse the Jewish population was. I think I understand this a little better now because not all Jews fit into this “ethno-religious” grouping, but any attempt to discredit the real racialization and stigmatization of European Jews would be illegitimate. When the banking systems in Europe failed and an economic collapse happened, Jews were easy to scapegoat. They had already been segregated from mainstream society and were easy to vilify based on the privileges that they had possessed out of necessity for their survival. The key factor here for me, was realizing that diasporic people cannot act as a tool for the state. In a podcast by Christian Davis, titled ‘Fascism and Colonialism’ I learned that Jewish Zionists were heavily involved in colonizing Namibia before Nazi Germany gained most of its power. But after World War 1, Germany had lost virtually all of their colonized land in Africa and since White supremacy had already gained momentum in German society, this loss was extremely humiliating to the White Germans. And again this loss of control from the White elites was attributed to Jewish involvement and Jews were yet again placed as the scapegoat. Another really prominent similarity between us and Jews is that we share this relationship to diaspora. And that makes Jewish history incredibly useful for Palestinians and other refugee groups to look to as an example when settling in someone else’s territory. My professor this quarter said (quote) “rootlessness is a breeding ground for atrocities”. And that really stuck out to me because Palestinians are now a diasporic group of people as well and a lot of us are residing on stolen land. And we are not entitled to any of it, especially not that of Turtle Island, we must act as guests upon entry to these communities and while we must preserve our identity. I’m no way shape or form advocating for us to assimilate, but also we mustn’t segregate ourselves from other marginalized groups and instead work to create real solidarity between us otherwise we will just perpetuate justified acts of violence in the name of self preservation. You see that’s also something I learned, and not actually from the Jewish people themselves but instead from their oppressors. Conquer and divide is a real strategy that works. We see it with the Nazi’s pitting the elite Jews against the Jewish masses but we also see it with plenty of other Jewish historical events. In North Africa for example, the French granted the Algerian Jewish population with French citizenship and didn’t offer this opportunity to its other Arab populations. This very clearly created a dichotomized relationship between North African Jews and non-Jewish North African people. Another author we read this quarter was Ariella Aisha Azoulay, she is a Palestinian and North African Jewish person that grew up in “Israel” as an Israeli and she’s informed a lot of my thought process here. She says “I came here [United States] seven years ago and I felt that Undoing Potential History book was almost done, but then I quickly realized it’s not done. And rather than having Palestine as its focus, Palestine became a reiteration of imperial violence rather than the exception.” Which I think brings to my point beautifully. We are not the exception, we are not special, and our persecution is not eternal. We are merely, like Azoulay says, a reiteration of imperial violence, and we can look to other displaced people when we need direction towards our liberation. The oppressed are the only ones who can liberate themselves. When I decided that I wanted to write this letter to you I initially wanted to warn you about the dangers of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, and how this typically is a cyclical process, meaning it’s a cycle of the oppressed becoming the oppressor. My goal was to warn you about the dangers of a free Palestine operating as Israel does now by using the justification of self-determination and protection of the Palestinian people. Upon my further investigation and study of Jewish history though, I realized that it is much more complex than this. All oppressed people subconsciously buy into ideologies that support White supremacy and oftentimes we seek protection from the state, settler colonial states, as a last ditch effort to save ourselves. We can see clear examples of this in Jewish history starting before the creation of Israel in Namibia up until now with the atrocities we see committed against Palestinians by Zionists. But we should also recognize when this is happening within our own community.e need to call out neoliberal Palestinian politics, we need to have community discussions about defunding the police and standing in solidarity with Black folxs and other marginalized communities in the land we settle, we need to make sure we aren’t aligning ourselves with the same states who would scapegoat us in a second if they needed to like they did to the Jews, and we have to be aware of when we are being divided. Some questions that I have coming out of this is how can we hold Fatah accountable for their corruption? How can we call in Hamas for discussions about the separation of church and state? I plan to be more critical in the ways I engage with lobbying and bureaucratic bullcrap in the United States from here on out. I plan to be more militant in my beliefs and less divisive within my community. And this means when I envision a free Palestine, I see it as a land where we radically love and accept anyone. Where we don’t have borders and we don’t displace others. Where we never use the excuse of self-determination to oppress someone else like the Israelis have done to us or the Nazis did to them. Jewish people are a necessity to Palestine and we will all prevail with radical love. Author: Josh Ceretti On Monday June 15th, a delegation from Whatcom Peace and Justice met with Rick Larsen, who represents the area in between Bellingham and Everett in Congress. Participants included WPJC Executive Director Aline Prata, board members Yoav Litvin and Josh Cerretti, WPJC interns Devan Gunther, Marii Herlinger, and Aisha Mansour, Alternatives to Military Service volunteer Zi Zhang, as well as Gene Marx from Veterans for Peace and three of the Congressman's staff.
After the requisite technical glitches, Aline began by explaining to Larsen some of the problems with the proposed Justice in Policing Act, which he had highlighted for our feedback. Aline pointed to the failure of existing rules and punishments to reduce police violence, suggesting that more regulations to be continuously broken are not what is needed, but a transformation in the very idea of policing and the carceral state. Josh then pressed the Congressman on the specific problem of police militarization, particularly as it is enabled through the Department of Defense's 1033 program, an issue to which we will return. Yoav provided Larsen with information on community control of police and how that model differs substantially from the community policing model for which many politicians are seeking more funding. Zi continued with a story from another volunteer about police presence in our local schools, asking the Congressman to support legislation that would remove School Resource Officers from their embedded positions within educational institutions. Last but not least, Gene placed these concerns in a global context by detailing multiple ways the Pentagon could save billions of dollars and asking Larsen to commit to a smaller Department of Defense budget in the next cycle. We appreciate the Congressman taking the time to meet with us, but those familiar with his record will not be surprised to learn that we received little support and no solid commitments from him. He promised to bring our concerns about too-little-too-late reforms in policing, community control, the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as local and global militarisms to Washington DC. At the same time, Larsen responded evasively or defensively to many of our propositions, so we're asking for your help to make sure he fulfills his obligations to the people he represents and acts to demilitarize law enforcement here in the United States. In recent weeks, many thoughtful critiques and examinations of the DoD's 1033 program have demonstrated how local police increasingly got their hands on military equipment that they are now using to brutalize Black people and other marginalized communities across the country. This program was instituted in the 1990s to help the military deal with a surplus of equipment needlessly stockpiled during the Cold War and Gulf War. In the wake of the LA Uprising and the mainstreaming of antiblack 'law and order' politics, many state, city, and county police forces sought gear that would allow them to more easily dominate and control large groups of civilians. This program deployed millions of dollars of military weapons within the borders claimed by the United States before a temporary halt in 2015 in the wake of reactions against militarized policing of Black-led uprisings in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere. The fragility of this sort of progressive reform became clear when the 1033 was reinstated in 2017 and even a cursory scan of coverage from recent protests demonstrates that responses to civil unrest have only become more militarized in recent years. Congressman Larsen responded to our initial critique of this program by pointing to the fact, flogged in many recent reports defending the program, that the 1033 program also involves transfers of office furniture and a large quantity of non-martial goods. What such a position fails to grasp is that all of these transfers, whether it's the mine-resistant vehicle owned by the Whatcom County Sherriffs or a comfy office chair used by a county health department worker, increase militarization. Militarization is the step-by-step process through which a person, institution, or idea comes to depend upon the military for its well being. The 1033 program makes local governments more dependent on the military for their functioning, drafting them to serve military ends with tricks to alleviate budget constraints. Furthermore, the program reduces the costs of decommissioning gear that often should not have been built in the first place, promoting careless spending by the Department of Defense and artificially disguising the costs of the waste they produce. That's why Whatcom Peace and Justice has supported attempts to end the program for years, even though most of the 'fixes' proposed so far only restrict the transfer of weapons and leave this militarizing program intact. An example of one of these good, but not good enough, responses to the 1033 program is the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act introduced by Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson in March of 2019. We were pleased to see that on June 11th, 2020, Congressman Larsen became a co-sponsor of this bill that was introduced with 66 original co-sponsors, of which he was not a part, fifteen months ago. Oddly, when praised for this, Larsen questioned the accuracy of Congress.gov, told our team to 'dig a little deeper,' and claimed to have been working on the issue with Johnson since 2015. While evidence exists of the two collaborating on small business loans and other projects, the fact remains that Larsen is not an original co-sponsor of this bill and did not sign up to be one until weeks after police murdered George Floyd and then responded with military force against protestors. We would have been open to hearing the Congressman explain how recent events had pushed him to take a stronger position on this issue but he instead claimed to have always been on top of this issue and, in our estimation, took credit for the work of his Black colleague. As of July 10th, it would seem clear that the Justice in Policing Act, despite being passed by the House, will not pass the Senate and become law. This makes it even more imperative to have a focused piece of legislation that takes action on the militarization of policing instead of speaking out against it publicly while voting to fund it when Congress is in session. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez has introduced a Demilitarizing Local Law Enforcement bill (HR 7143) that would repeal the military surplus program entirely (instead of just restricting certain transfers). The bill has 14 co-sponsors, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Barbara Lee, but not Larsen. In June, the bill was referred to the House Armed Services Committee on which Larsen sits, but he has made no statements in favor of this bill or taken any action to advance it. We demand more from our representatives. So, we're asking you, supporters of Whatcom Peace and Justice to reach out to Congressman Rick Larsen. Let him know you oppose the militarization of policing, the militarization of civilian governance, and the camouflaging of military spending's true costs through the Department of Defense's 1033 program. This program needs to be ended and we need to re-assess the presence of military equipment in all security forces, from local police departments up to federal agencies like ICE and Border Patrol. Here's a template for your message: [This template is designed for people in the 2nd Congressional District (Find your rep). Feel free to modify it to contact your Representative if you don’t live in the 2nd] Dear Congressman Larsen, I am writing to encourage you to take action on the militarization of policing and to support H.R. 7143, the Demilitarizing Local Law Enforcement Act of 2020. In recent weeks, many thoughtful critiques and examinations of the DoD's 1033 program have demonstrated how local police increasingly got their hands on military equipment that they are now using to brutalize Black people and other marginalized communities across the country. This program was instituted in the 1990s to help the military deal with a surplus of equipment needlessly stockpiled during the Cold War and Gulf War. In the wake of the LA Uprising and the mainstreaming of antiblack 'law and order' politics, many state, city, and county police forces sought gear that would allow them to more easily dominate and control large groups of civilians. This program deployed millions of dollars of military weapons within the borders claimed by the United States before a temporary halt in 2015 in the wake of reactions against militarized policing of Black-led uprisings in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere. The fragility of this sort of progressive reform became clear when the 1033 was reinstated in 2017 and even a cursory scan of coverage from recent protests demonstrates that responses to civil unrest have only become more militarized in recent years. I appreciate your co-sponsorship of Congressman Hank Johnson’s Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act as well as your vote in favor of the Justice in Policing Act, both of which would limit transfers of military equipment to civilian police if passed into law. Unfortunately, neither piece of legislation goes far enough and many barriers stand in the way of their adoption. So, I urge you to become a co-sponsor of House Resolution 7143, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s Demilitarizing Local Law Enforcement Act of 2020, and to do everything in your ability to move this bill forward on the Armed Services Committee. Your constituents do not want tanks, rifles, and armored stormtroopers on the streets of our communities. We see the connections between the last two decades of senseless wars initiated by the US abroad and the resultant militarization of life at home, exemplified by recent waves of police violence. As my Representative, I’m asking you to take action and help demilitarize local law enforcement. Best, [Your name] |
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