Daily Kos Liberation League: Recent Episodes
Irna Landrum
In the summer of 2020, all eyes turned to the massive protests in Minneapolis after George Floyd was murdered and the cops responsible had yet to face charges. A group of organizers took to the stage in Powderhorn Park with several city council members and put forth a solution: Defund the Police. In response, many progressives called for reforms but said defunding was a step too far. That it was too radical.
Welcome to Pathways to Liberation, with Irna Landrum from Daily Kos Liberation League. This series, asks: Can communities keep themselves safe without police and without locking people up? We talk to activists, organizers, and strategists wrestling with those very questions.
We have put together a playlist on YouTube and on all major podcasting platforms highlighting these conversations. We hope you take the time to listen to all of them, and reflect on the work that you can do to shift power away from police and detention and toward communities and freedom.
How do we keep our communities safe without police?
How do we keep building new systems when they get a little messy and complicated?
Join us in a transformative justice conversation with Ejeris Dixon.
In San Antonio, Oji Martin co-founded the grassroots organization Fix SAPD to push for significant reforms of the San Antonio Police Department. Fix SAPD noticed an alarming trend: Not only are police officers rarely disciplined for violence, but of those who are fired, a stunning 70% are eventually rehired. And the problem lies in chapters of the Texas local government code.
Chapter 143—the code that governs police (and other civil servants') hiring, promotions, discipline and records—gives police wildly unfair disciplinary advantages such as allowing officers to review the evidence against them before being questioned and expunging “incidents” from an officer’s record after only 180 days. Chapter 174—the collective bargaining statute—allows the local police union contract to supersede the civil service laws set forth in Chapter 143. That means the contract carries more weight than the actual law.
Last summer Fix SAPD launched a petition drive to repeal both Chapters 143 and 174 by ballot initiative. The organizers and volunteers began the work to collect tens of thousands of in-person signatures. Though they fell short of the signatures needed to put Chapter 143 on the ballot, they were successful in gathering enough signatures for a repeal measure for Chapter 174 on the ballot for the municipal election this past May.
Fix SAPD’s deputy director Ananda Tomas sat down for an interview with Daily Kos Liberation League to discuss the organization's Repeal 174 campaign.
Join Daily Kos Liberation League and Minneapolis-based organizers from Reclaim the Block for this introduction to abolition.
Explore the history of policing, frequently asked questions, and how proposed reforms to policing fall short. Be ready to dig into what safety means to you and your communities.
To learn more about Reclaim the Block: https://www.reclaimtheblock.org/home
Videos used with permission by Critical Resistance: http://www.criticalresistance.org/
Minneapolis-based artist, organizer, and healer Ricardo Levins Morales sits with Daily Kos campaign director Irna Landrum to discuss the MPD 150 project -- a community and arts-based performance evaluation of the Minneapolis Police Department's 150 years of existence.
Ricardo also discusses generations of abolition organizing, from Frederick Douglass to the present, and presents a hopeful, police-free future.
The MPD 150 report can be found here: https://www.mpd150.com/report/
Ricardo Levins Morales's artwork can be found here: https://www.rlmartstudio.com/
In the summer of 2020, all eyes turned to the massive protests in Minneapolis after George Floyd was murdered and the cops responsible had yet to face charges. A group of organizers took to the stage in Powderhorn Park with several city council members and put forth a solution: Defund the Police. In response, many progressives called for reforms but said defunding was a step too far. That it was too radical.
Welcome to Pathways to Liberation, with Irna Landrum from Daily Kos Liberation League. This series, asks: Can communities keep themselves safe without police and without locking people up? We talk to activists, organizers, and strategists wrestling with those very questions.
We have put together a playlist on YouTube and on all major podcasting platforms highlighting these conversations. We hope you take the time to listen to all of them and reflect on the work that you can do to shift power away from police and detention and toward communities and freedom.