https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjXhLhLVXm8
Saturday, August 15, 2020
BOLIVIA: POLITICAL STRIKE SHUTS DOWN COUNTRY
By Michael Otto, Workers.org.
Do Bolivian Lives Matter?
The Bolivian masses are experiencing a perfect storm of social, health and economic crises. A U.S.-backed military coup overthrew President Evo Morales Ayma in November 2019 — Morales called it a lithium coup.
To Wall Street, only the great reserves of Bolivian lithium matter.
Once again, a scenario of multiple crises that began with the November coup defines Bolivia’s future. De facto President Jeanine Áñez’s main achievement was to unleash a shameless wave of racist repression against Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) and the Aymara and Quechua Indigenous peoples.
Áñez kept none of the promises she made to pacify the people after the November coup, nor did she offer any assistance to the poor during the twin crises of COVID-19 and the ensuing economic collapse.
First there were a series of election postponements. The Supreme Election Tribunal’s (TSE) ultimate unilateral reset of the presidential election to Oct. 18 was the final straw for the masses. Their Aug. 3 general strike with at least 75 roadblocks shut all the country’s major highways.
“The general strike and roadblocks were decided upon at a town hall meeting held in the city of El Alto, La Paz, on July 28 where social organizations from the nine departments of the country gathered for a massive protest march. The social movements reject the postponement of the election until Oct. 18 as announced by TSE President Salvador Romero.” (resumen-english.org, Aug. 3)
MAS candidate for president, Lucho Arce, said in a radio interview, “Neither the MAS, nor Evo Morales nor I are behind the mobilizations against the illegalities of the TSE. Bolivia is mobilizing itself.” He said that shrinking family resources due to massive unemployment and wage cuts forced the action by the Central Labor Council of Bolivian Workers (COB) and the Unity Pact, which includes social organizations, among them Indigenous bodies, that lead resistance to the coup government.
“It is not MAS that is mobilized, but the people who have grown tired of the arbitrariness and looting of a government whose only task was to call for elections,” said Arce. (kawsachuncoca.com, July 25)
Repression And Violence Continue
The unwillingness or inability of the government to communicate without threats, arrests and violence continued unabated on Monday, Aug. 10, after the COB and Unity Pact negotiated unsuccessfully with the TSE and the Plurinational Legislative Assembly on Saturday night until dawn on Sunday morning, Aug. 9.
Bolivia has arrived at a moment of truth. Many believe the hated Áñez will stop at nothing to hold onto power. TeleSUR English reported that two U.S. war planes were delivered to the government.
Government ministers are making ominous threats. Motorcycle gangs of fascists, supported by the police and the army, are raiding some roadblocks around Cochabamba much as they terrorized urban Indigenous people last November. This all fits with the government that engineered a savage regime change and massacred Indigenous people who protested the coup.
Will Morales’ overthrown MAS party return to power through elections, or will some other outcome erupt through a bloody struggle in the streets? Only time will tell.
Evo Morales tweeted: “De facto government and right-wing press discredit legitimate mobilizations of the Indigenous movement and social organizations. The peoples that fight for peace and social justice are called terrorists, savages and they tell us that we are violent; it is the North American doctrine.” @evoespueblo
Dialogue Is Doomed
On Friday, Aug. 7, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on the de facto interim president to promote dialogue with all the protagonists in the struggle. Áñez promptly invited key players to a televised dialogue that took place at 9 a.m. on Aug. 9. The U.N., the Catholic Church, The European Union, the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Government, Añez, representatives of two political parties (ADN and PAN-Bol) and a representative of the heavy transport industry attended.
One participant humiliated Áñez by sarcastically pointing to key empty seats. Not attending were representatives from the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, the Central Labor Council of Bolivian Workers, the Unity Pact, MAS and four other invited parties.
Áñez’s “dialogue” was doomed because, as mentioned above, an emergency meeting between Salvador Romero of the TSE, the Plurinational Legislative Assembly, the COB and the Unity Pact that lasted until sunrise on Sunday morning ended in failure.
In recent days, the COB exhorted demonstrators to allow passage of oxygen and medical supplies so as not to interfere with the national hospitals in their fight against COVID-19. The government and the media have lied, saying that strikers are blocking vital supplies and emergency vehicles.
In the meantime Bolivia’s coronavirus cases are soaring, with thousands of uncounted deaths due to the lack of testing. Nine out of 10 families have lost income due to the collapse of the economy under Áñez’s incompetent management.
On the ground, militants who remember the massacres and the broken promises, whose families are hungry due to the crises, want more than an election. According to Resumen, “[T]he cooperatives of miners are saying: ‘We will not back down one millimetre in our struggle for Áñez to resign.’”
One of their leaders said that they are going to continue with the struggle and that “the dictator Áñez must resign.” He warned the military and police: “[E]ither join us or suffer the consequences. There are millions of us throughout the country.” (Resumen Latinoamericano, Aug. 9)
YOUTH ARE LEADING THE MOVEMENT FOR POLICE-FREE SCHOOLS
By Tasasha Henderson, Truthout.
August 13, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/youth-are-leading-the-movement-for-police-free-schools/
In this moment of transformative possibility, amid activists’ growing calls to defund and abolish the police, young people across the country are leading a movement to remove police officers from schools. They are demanding that city and school district leaders reallocate funding for police into services and resources for students, including counseling, social workers and restorative justice programming.
The movement for police-free schools has a long history of Black youth leading this fight as a key strategy to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, a process of funneling predominately Black and Latinx students out of schools and into the juvenile legal system.
Minneapolis Public School student Nathaniel Genene talked about this decades-long struggle to remove police from schools in an interview with The Nation. “I think it’s important to point out that this has been a generational struggle. We’ve had cops in schools since the ’60s,” Genene said. “So, this movement definitely did not start last week. And groups today such as Young People’s Action Coalition [YPAC], Our Turn, and Youth Out Loud have been working on this issue for some time.”
The week of June 22 saw a National Week of Action to support youth organizers in their fight for police-free schools. Black youth and other youth of color led daily actions across the country, including marches, calling school board members, creating and encouraging supporters to sign petitions, and providing virtual political education events. There have been some victories in response.
On July 7, Phoenix Union Superintendent Chad Gaston announced that the school district will not renew its agreement for school resource officers with Phoenix police for the 2020-2021 school year.
Although the Chicago Public School Board voted against terminating its contract with the Chicago Police Department, local school councils have until August 14 to vote on whether to remove police officers from campus. Of the eight councils that have voted so far, Benito Juarez Community Academy and Northside College Prep voted to remove officers.
“This issue is important to me because it affects me, being Latino [and] likely to be led through the school-to-prison pipeline. I’ve experienced firsthand how this feels,” Joseeduardo Ramos-Valdez, a youth leader with the Puente Youth Movement, told Truthout.
The Puente Youth Movement is a youth-led program that works to fight the school-to-prison pipeline in Phoenix and Central Arizona through the Youth Leadership Program and #CopsOuttaCampus campaign.
“Cops do not make me feel safe at all, and I hate how we have to check ourselves to make sure we’re not acting ‘wrong’ when we are just being ourselves. Cops give me anxiety,” Ramos-Valdez said.
The rise in the 1990s of “zero-tolerance” discipline policies in public schools across the country led to a reliance on police in schools, and suspensions and expulsions to address behavioral issues that were once handled by teachers and other school staff. The violence of policing in schools manifests as both anti-Black violence and gender-based violence.
In a 2015 report from the African American Policy Forum, U.S. Department of Education data was presented that showed that while Black boys were suspended three times more than white boys in the 2011-12 school year, Black girls were six times more likely to be suspended than white girls. Police in schools have also led to the violent treatment of students. For instance, on January 29, 2019, a 16-year-old high school student on Chicago’s West Side was shocked with a Taser in school by a school resource officer after being removed from class for pulling out her cellphone.
Incidents like this, and the fact that although Black students account for 36 percent of Chicago Public Schools’ students they accounted for 66 percent of police notifications, have spurred organizing to remove police from schools. Youth organizers in the #PoliceFreeSchools Coalition demanded that the Chicago Board of Education end Chicago Public Schools’ $33 million contract with the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and reallocate those funds to counseling and other youth services. A youth-led direct action included protesting outside of Chicago Board of Education President Miguel Del Valle’s home on June 24, the morning where the seven-member Board voted 4-3 to not end CPD’s contract.
Chicago Public Schools student Essence Gatheright expressed her frustration with the vote. “We need more people who are willing to side with youth, who are willing [to] genuinely see us,” Gatheright told ABC 7 Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, student activists in organizations such as the Black Liberation Project, Youth Out Loud and the Young Muslim Collective have for years attended school board meetings and organized rallies demanding the school board to end their contract with the police department. Their committed activism led to the Minneapolis Public School Board voting unanimously for a resolution to end the district’s contract with the police department on June 2.
In this moment when bold abolitionist demands are being heard and considered by cities and school districts, youth are leading the fight for police-free schools and a police-free society. Kysani London, a member of Chicago Public School Alumni for Abolition who organized a protest at Northside College Prep to pressure the local school council to remove school resource officers, connected the police-free-schools movement to the broader police abolition movement. “Right now, the small-scale police-free-school work that we’re engaging in can — in some ways — be seen as one of the first dominoes to fall in a series in the move for police abolition.… We, along with numerous other national organizations, are helping to push the door ajar for radical change surrounding the concept of policing,” London told Liberation News.
These intensified campaigns have come amid a broader movement for defunding police. Thanks to these efforts, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council announced their intent to disband the city’s police department and replace it with an alternative system of public safety, and other city governments, such as Los Angeles, New York City and Philadelphia, have expressed support for decreasing or opposing increases in city police budgets. Youth organizers are showing us that the movement for police-free schools, which has been building for decades, is a key component of the vision for a world beyond policing.
https://popularresistance.org/youth-are-leading-the-movement-for-police-free-schools/
In this moment of transformative possibility, amid activists’ growing calls to defund and abolish the police, young people across the country are leading a movement to remove police officers from schools. They are demanding that city and school district leaders reallocate funding for police into services and resources for students, including counseling, social workers and restorative justice programming.
The movement for police-free schools has a long history of Black youth leading this fight as a key strategy to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, a process of funneling predominately Black and Latinx students out of schools and into the juvenile legal system.
Minneapolis Public School student Nathaniel Genene talked about this decades-long struggle to remove police from schools in an interview with The Nation. “I think it’s important to point out that this has been a generational struggle. We’ve had cops in schools since the ’60s,” Genene said. “So, this movement definitely did not start last week. And groups today such as Young People’s Action Coalition [YPAC], Our Turn, and Youth Out Loud have been working on this issue for some time.”
The week of June 22 saw a National Week of Action to support youth organizers in their fight for police-free schools. Black youth and other youth of color led daily actions across the country, including marches, calling school board members, creating and encouraging supporters to sign petitions, and providing virtual political education events. There have been some victories in response.
On July 7, Phoenix Union Superintendent Chad Gaston announced that the school district will not renew its agreement for school resource officers with Phoenix police for the 2020-2021 school year.
Although the Chicago Public School Board voted against terminating its contract with the Chicago Police Department, local school councils have until August 14 to vote on whether to remove police officers from campus. Of the eight councils that have voted so far, Benito Juarez Community Academy and Northside College Prep voted to remove officers.
“This issue is important to me because it affects me, being Latino [and] likely to be led through the school-to-prison pipeline. I’ve experienced firsthand how this feels,” Joseeduardo Ramos-Valdez, a youth leader with the Puente Youth Movement, told Truthout.
The Puente Youth Movement is a youth-led program that works to fight the school-to-prison pipeline in Phoenix and Central Arizona through the Youth Leadership Program and #CopsOuttaCampus campaign.
“Cops do not make me feel safe at all, and I hate how we have to check ourselves to make sure we’re not acting ‘wrong’ when we are just being ourselves. Cops give me anxiety,” Ramos-Valdez said.
The rise in the 1990s of “zero-tolerance” discipline policies in public schools across the country led to a reliance on police in schools, and suspensions and expulsions to address behavioral issues that were once handled by teachers and other school staff. The violence of policing in schools manifests as both anti-Black violence and gender-based violence.
In a 2015 report from the African American Policy Forum, U.S. Department of Education data was presented that showed that while Black boys were suspended three times more than white boys in the 2011-12 school year, Black girls were six times more likely to be suspended than white girls. Police in schools have also led to the violent treatment of students. For instance, on January 29, 2019, a 16-year-old high school student on Chicago’s West Side was shocked with a Taser in school by a school resource officer after being removed from class for pulling out her cellphone.
Incidents like this, and the fact that although Black students account for 36 percent of Chicago Public Schools’ students they accounted for 66 percent of police notifications, have spurred organizing to remove police from schools. Youth organizers in the #PoliceFreeSchools Coalition demanded that the Chicago Board of Education end Chicago Public Schools’ $33 million contract with the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and reallocate those funds to counseling and other youth services. A youth-led direct action included protesting outside of Chicago Board of Education President Miguel Del Valle’s home on June 24, the morning where the seven-member Board voted 4-3 to not end CPD’s contract.
Chicago Public Schools student Essence Gatheright expressed her frustration with the vote. “We need more people who are willing to side with youth, who are willing [to] genuinely see us,” Gatheright told ABC 7 Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, student activists in organizations such as the Black Liberation Project, Youth Out Loud and the Young Muslim Collective have for years attended school board meetings and organized rallies demanding the school board to end their contract with the police department. Their committed activism led to the Minneapolis Public School Board voting unanimously for a resolution to end the district’s contract with the police department on June 2.
In this moment when bold abolitionist demands are being heard and considered by cities and school districts, youth are leading the fight for police-free schools and a police-free society. Kysani London, a member of Chicago Public School Alumni for Abolition who organized a protest at Northside College Prep to pressure the local school council to remove school resource officers, connected the police-free-schools movement to the broader police abolition movement. “Right now, the small-scale police-free-school work that we’re engaging in can — in some ways — be seen as one of the first dominoes to fall in a series in the move for police abolition.… We, along with numerous other national organizations, are helping to push the door ajar for radical change surrounding the concept of policing,” London told Liberation News.
These intensified campaigns have come amid a broader movement for defunding police. Thanks to these efforts, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council announced their intent to disband the city’s police department and replace it with an alternative system of public safety, and other city governments, such as Los Angeles, New York City and Philadelphia, have expressed support for decreasing or opposing increases in city police budgets. Youth organizers are showing us that the movement for police-free schools, which has been building for decades, is a key component of the vision for a world beyond policing.
SEATTLE JUST DEFUNDED ITS POLICE — SORT OF
By Paul Blest, Vice.
The Decision Wasn’t Enough To Satisfy Activists, But It Made The Police Chief Resign Almost Immediately.
After a summer of explosive demonstrations that saw protesters take over several city blocks for weeks, the Seattle City Council approved a budget “revision” package on Monday that will cut $3 million from the police budget and eliminate up to 100 positions from the department. The move both fell far short of the demands of activists, and was so forcefully opposed by the city’s establishment that the police chief resigned almost immediately.
Seattle police chief Carmen Best wrote a letter to members of the department announcing her retirement late Monday, effective September 2. Best, the first Black woman to serve as Seattle police chief, spent 26 years at the department before being appointed chief of police in 2018. “This was a difficult decision for me, but when it’s time, it’s time,” Best said in her letter, according to KING-TV.
Best will be replaced on an interim basis by deputy chief Adrian Diaz. Mayor Jenny Durkan, who opposed the cuts, lamented Best’s resignation in a letter to police. “I regret deeply that she concluded that the best way to serve the city and help the department was a change in leadership, in the hope that would change the dynamics to move forward with the City Council,” Durkan wrote, according to KING-TV.
Best’s move comes after the Seattle City Council voted 7-1 on Monday for the cuts in a budget revision. The cuts make up less than 1 percent of the city’s $400 million budget and 100 positions represent 7 percent of the city’s police force. The position cuts include 32 officers from patrol, as well as reductions in specialized units including SWAT and school resource officers, and the removal of officers from the city’s homeless “navigation” team.
The City Council touted it as a first step, after a majority previously committed to cutting the department’s budget in half. In a statement, City Council president Lorena M. González hinted that more cuts would be considered when the next annual budget process rolls around. “The Council has used the summer rebalancing budget process to consider initial cuts, with more budget allocation decisions to be made in the fall during the Council’s regularly-scheduled budget session,” she said in a statement.
The budget cuts follow months of protest in Seattle, which climaxed when protesters took over the immediate vicinity of the Seattle PD’s abandoned East precinct and set up the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), later rebranded the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). Durkan ordered police to clear the area in early July, but protests have continued, especially after the Department of Homeland Security dispatched federal law enforcement officers there last month.
Anti-racism activists had demanded a 50 percent budget cut, and the lone vote against the package was socialist Kshama Sawant, who thought the police cuts didn’t go far enough and austerity measures in other areas of the budget went too far.
“With my ‘no’ vote today, I affirm our movement’s unchanging demands: Defund SPD by at least 50% and tax big business and the rich, not working people, because we can’t pay and we won’t pay for this crisis – this crisis of the racist and bankrupt system of capitalism,” she said in a statement.
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