Dialogue Description:
This dialogue will include a short presentation and information session to learn about Urban Shield, local efforts to stop it, and the roles of white people to reduce police militarization in our communities. We will have time to reflect and discuss how this connects to broader issues of community resistance to increased policing and militarization. The withdrawal from participation in SF Pride by Organizational Grand Marshal Black Lives Matter, Grand Marshal Janetta Johnson and Heritage Awardee St. James Infirmary, in response to increased policing of Civic Center, brought the fundamental themes of security, vulnerability, community consultation, and police violence against LGBTQ communities of color, to the center of concern.
Urban Shield is a weapons expo and war-like police training that brings together law enforcement agencies from across the country and world to learn how to better repress, criminalize, and militarize working class communities and communities of color. UrbanShield is a key player in creating militarized emergency response systems that make police the first responders to everything from climate disasters to protests.
Suggested readings:
- ACLU Report: War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing
- BLM: In response to increased policing of civic center, awardees withdraw participation from pride parade
- We Pushed Urban Shield Out of Oakland, but the Struggle Continues!
Dialogue Notes:
These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes. Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.
Small Group Share Outs:
– Question: What is weapons testing actually look like? Reaction to hearing
that ‘Israel tests weapons on Palestinians’.
o Weapons manufacturers will sell and try weapons to IDF and that information is used as a form of ‘testing’. Not for simply ‘testing’, but as part of military control in Palestine. US connections to weapons controls.
o Unique relationship between US/Israeli military relationship – US gives Israel $ to buy US weapons
– What is the motivation to ‘give’ free weapons to police from military? Possibly to instigate as a business method and to suck up military surplus.
o Increasingly politically challenging to come up against arms manufacturers – hugely powerful lobbies.
- – US exports huge amount of weapons globally. US internal versus global connections to militarization and US imperialism. Normalization internationally in some communities around tanks, ect. Versus outrage in the US
- – Questioning alternatives to policing related to public health responses – how to educate people about alternatives
o Oakland Power Project: Community presentation about the need to decouple emergency medical response from police. Support for people to develop skills to assess capacity to respond without calling the police.
o Peoples’ Community Medics
o CR
– Alternatives to calling police experiences?
o Questions of assessment resource
o CR training coming up will address that
o How do we think about changing the ways we interact in our environmentto have alternatives when issues arise – how our
housemates might respond, how to support each other.
- – Questions about histories of police versus military weapons. Why is there adistinction?
- – Hyper-masculinity/hyper-patriotic marketing for weaponry in connection toaggression and violence
- – Militaristic language embedded in language, including in some organizing cultures and media
o Creates culture of fear
o How weapons don’t make us feel safer - – Buy in by carceral health system
o Mental health collusion to incarcerate people, profit benefit and direct monetary tie for carceral health system
o Santa Rita jail expansion
o Medical neglect related deaths in womens prisons connection
- – Personal distance from some of these issues
- – Recent shootings of police – information in presentation supports conversations with people who claim the necessity of arming police
o How uncommon it is for police to die
o Fewer police have died under the Obama presidency than in the last 100 years, despite narrative of increased vulnerability of police - – Gun control narratives:
o Torn about wanting to support gun control, with the danger of the narrative de-arming communities while police become increasingly armed.
o Black armed community protesters in Cleveland being targeted for temporary suspension of 2nd amendment.
– Emergency medical health being directed to take instruction from police, rather than to care for people. Training normalization to increasingly call police.
o How to assess situations for medical providers when considering calling the police – immigration statues, sexual assault
o Police only get very limited hours of ‘mental health training’