Yesterday a group of Indigenous folks righteously tore down the statue of Christopher Columbus at th

Yesterday a group of Indigenous folks righteously tore down the statue of Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol. Unsurprisingly, shortly after, state police arrived in riot gear to protect the fallen statue from further damage. Much has been said about the “failings” of police being able to keep people safe, but this idea of failure assumes that the function of the police is to keep all people safe. Images such as this should remind us of the dangers of reform, and that the true function of police is to protect whiteness and white supremacy. They are proxy for colonial militia, upholding both the material and ideological conditions of white supremacy. In the American mythos, police are positioned as heroes and so of course to many, and to white civil society especially, their brutality and violence is confusingly. Though, the brutality is the point. To position black, brown and indigenous people as wild, as uncivilized and violent police create only the illusion of safety, that all that stands between order and societal collapse is immobility and constraint of black, brown and indigenous people. Images such as this offer an easy and perfect lens into the function of the police, you cannot reform a colonial militia away from violence and patrol. If it is safety we want, if it is equity and liberation we want, we have to admit, collectively, that police are antithetical to this goal. They are an ideological death cult, they are willing to brutalize indigenous people to protect the stone bust of one of the architects of white supremacy. Symbols matter, statues alert a society to its values, and so does the defense of these statues. Tear them all down. Abolish police now! #blacklivesmatter #nativelivesmatter #justiceforgeorgefloyd #justiceforbreonnataylor #freeleonardpeltier #abolishpolice @unicorn.riot https://www.instagram.com/p/CBTv1lNFg3v/?igshid=p4mkurza7h00 -- source link

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