State Terror, Resistance, and Community Solidarity: Dismantling the Police

• In Event: Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice – Panel II

Abstract

For several reasons, I look at some antecedents to the current demands to dismantle/defund the police, specifically in the US, England, and Australia. Perhaps, the most obvious reason is the ubiquity of targeted policing against Indigenous and Black people and people of colour. However, perhaps more important for contemporary political strategies is the focus, in earlier movements, on solidarity-making in the community and the connections made with an abolitionist vision for the future. From the late 1960s, the activist movements against police violence linked their work against police terror with organizing and providing services for local communities. Many had an outward vision that was also focused on oppressed people generally and was internationalist in outlook. Finally, pre-empting the current debates on reformism, many of these earlier activists and writers were critical of attempts to reform the police – they saw increased police training, a greater focus on community relations and so forth – as essentially missing the point of the institutional role of police in racialized and class oppression.

Author

• Chris Cunneen, University of Technology Sydney