“As a man, I undertake to risk annihilation so that two or three truths can cast their essential light on the world.”
― Black Skin, White Masks
― Black Skin, White Masks
“The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression to affect the normal life style of as many members of society as possible. By compromising and playing at class war, we lose.”
― Blood in My Eye
― Blood in My Eye
“By “crime” I do not mean mere illegality, but instead a category of socially proscribed acts that: (1) threaten or harm other people and (2) violate norms related to justice, personal safety, or human rights, (3) in such a manner or to such a degree as to warrant community intervention (and sometimes coercive intervention). That category would surely include a large number of things that are presently illegal (rape, murder, dropping bricks off an overpass), would certainly not include other things that are presently illegal (smoking pot, sleeping in public parks, nude sunbathing), and would likely also include some things that are not presently illegal (mass evictions, the invasion of Iraq). The point here is that the standards I want to appeal to in invoking the idea of crime are not the state’s standards, but the community’s — and, specifically, the community’s standards as they relate to justice, rights, personal safety, and perhaps especially the question of violence. (...)
Because the state uses this protective function to justify its own violence, the replacement of the police institution is not only a goal of social change, but also a means of achieving it. The challenge is to create another system that can protect us from crime, and can do so better, more justly, with a respect for human rights, and with a minimum of bullying. What is needed, in short, is a shift in the responsibility for public safety—away from the state and toward the community.”
― Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
Because the state uses this protective function to justify its own violence, the replacement of the police institution is not only a goal of social change, but also a means of achieving it. The challenge is to create another system that can protect us from crime, and can do so better, more justly, with a respect for human rights, and with a minimum of bullying. What is needed, in short, is a shift in the responsibility for public safety—away from the state and toward the community.”
― Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
“I repeat: realistic, day-to-day needs should be the basis of organizing people and making them conscious of revolution-- that the world, the universe, must revolve-- that it will stop, stagnate, and die for no man's privilege.”
― Blood in My Eye
― Blood in My Eye
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