Thank you Julia Carrie Wong for this in-depth VICE piece on Urban Shield and our opposition. And for the great title: Everyone at Urban Shield has a vested interest in constructing a narrative of fear. The corporations use the fear of terrorism to sell equipment to police. Law enforcement agencies use the fear of terrorism to justify buying and using that equipment against the citizenry. The national security state uses the fear of terrorism to keep tabs on local activists. What the organizers of Urban Shield don’t want to admit is that the most pressing fear felt by the police is fear of the people they’re supposed to protect . . . “They are trained to treat us like enemy combatants,” said Michael Walker, co-chair of the ONYX Organizing Committee, a black community group in Oakland. “The only reason this sort of thing exists is to keep us down,” said Sanyika Bryant of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an organization that has become well known for its research finding that an extrajudicial killing of a black person occurs in the United States every 28 hours. “We know that with all of that Department of Homeland Security funding—none of that safety is for those of us who are here today,” said Tara Tabassi of the War Resisters League.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 18:05:55 +0000