Former NFL player and national anthem protester Colin Kaepernick called for abolishing America’s police departments, which he says, are rooted in “white supremacy.”
Kaepernick recently published a screed against law enforcement on his Medium.com page entitled, “The Demand for Abolition.”
The one-time NFL quarterback exclaimed that American police forces have “roots in white supremacy and anti-blackness.” He added that the “central intent” of law enforcement is to “surveil, terrorize, capture, and kill marginalized populations, specifically Black folks.”
Kaepernick relies on the ahistorical proclamations of black activists who claim that all police in the U.S. were started to keep slaves in chains. The claim that police were little else but glorified slave catchers ignores the fact that the first organized police force was created in 1844 in slave-free New York City. Or that most of the next half dozen after that were in northern states where slavery did not exist.
The multimillion-dollar Nike contract owner went on to say that America’s police cannot be repaired. They have to be completely eliminated.
“Abolition is the only way to secure a future beyond anti-Black institutions of social control, violence, and premature deathbolition is the only way to secure a future beyond anti-Black institutions of social control, violence, and premature death,” he wrote.
Kaepernick also suggested that all the money that now goes to law enforcement should be redirected to the communities “to address mental health needs, homelessness and houselessness, access to education, and job creation as well as community-based methods of accountability.”
In the article, Kaepernick promises to post forty more essays by political prisoners, grassroots organizers, movement leaders, scholars, and family members of those affected by anti-Black state violence and terrorism. The themes will be: “police and policing, prisons and carcerality, fuck reform, and abolition now.”
He ended the article, “Abolition now. Abolition for the people.”
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