Tag: Police Violence

The Winnipeg police union says officers are constantly under attack by everything from “gang members” to video games to bedbugs. It’s a strategy to persuade the public that the only solution is more police and more money.

Nearly two years after the summer of 2020, donations and public support for Black police abolitionists on the Prairies have dried up. Meanwhile, police budgets keep growing.

For professor Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, “when we embrace the use of repressive political policing, we’re mobilizing the tools that will primarily be used against our own movements.”

In British Columbia, a little-known arm of the RCMP is dedicated to enforcing injunctions for resource extraction companies. Interviews with land defenders, a C-IRG commander, and an anonymous source reveal details about their history, training, and practices.

It’s time for unions to expel police from their membership, because a strong labour movement can only be built on a foundation of safety for Black and Indigenous members. 

Unions are meant to defend their working-class members against unfair criticism and wrongful termination. But in Winnipeg, the police union is working to obstruct accountability for police officers who kill and abuse people.

Amid calls to defund and ultimately abolish the police, we spoke to the people who are already working on replacing the police with crisis workers in Canada.

While mental health interventions have been touted as an alternative to policing, the mental health field has a long history of perpetrating racist and colonial violence.

Experts say rising police militarization is a consequence of mixing police and military vendors at equipment expos

It’s a demand that’s easy to understand and easy to fight for, which is important because we’ll need a lot of people to help us win it.

Toward an abolitionist approach to decent work for all

When you factor in the long history of Black people, Indigenous people, and people of colour using guns to defend their communities against police, the military, and white supremacists, gun regulation takes on a different meaning.

A fatal police-involved shooting has prompted calls for Saskatchewan to create an independent citizen oversight body. But what if most civilian committees aren’t made up solely of civilians at all?

71 years ago, India promised to let the people of Kashmir choose to join India or Pakistan. In the absence of the referendum, protestors in Indian-occupied Kashmir are voicing their desire for freedom by showing up in the thousands to the funerals of separatist militants. But 2018 has been the bloodiest year in a decade inside Indian-occupied Kashmir.

Cops may kill fewer people in Canada than in the U.S., but it’s clear that the same racism and lack of accountability underpins police shootings as in the U.S. The only difference is that, in Canada, it’s accompanied by less transparency and a paucity of data.

Josephine Pelletier was shot to death by Calgary police in May. Her life and death shed light on the complicated interplay between colonialism, incarceration, and police brutality. This is her story.

Black and Indigenous people cannot look to the state for protection or systemic change. Instead, our movements have to recognize the differences between our oppressions, and stand beside each other while building new, shared spaces to exist.

The feedback loop between harmful media representation and legislation has imposed a massive burden on Somalis who arrived in Canada to escape war. For 30 years, it has impacted employment prospects, access to education and housing, and the freedom to swiftly rebuild lives.

When Mexican teachers went on strike to protest President Enrique Peña Nieto’s neoliberal education reforms, the state, backed by major financial institutions, cracked down in a bloody attempt at democratic suppression. What does the teachers’ fight signal for the future of public education?

Five young Black folks speak to the challenges and strategies for building and sustaining the Black liberation movement.