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Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is defending his comments from last month in which he claimed that millions of Americans may need to lose their jobs in order for inflation to come under control.

Bayley Pitts believed that she would receive help when she went to the police as a teenage victim of sexual violence at the hands of her biological father. She did not — and now, Pitts faces the prospect of losing her mother, Wendy Howard, to the same system that failed to protect either of them. In an interview with Truthout, she wonders, “Why are you taking my mom from me? The one who protected me from all this? That’s not fair.”

Many survivors of domestic and sexual violence argue that the criminal legal system in the United States forces them to choose between their freedom and their lives, often criminalizing women, trans and gender non-conforming people for acts of self-defense and limiting their rights to bodily autonomy. This pattern most heavily impacts survivors of color. It is part of the larger constellation of patriarchy, white supremacy and settler colonialism in which the prison system is rooted.

Pitts told Truthout that the backstory to her mother’s criminalization was a long history of abuse by Pitts’s father. Howard had managed to separate from her partner after a long history of abuse, but some of her children still wanted to have a relationship with him.

Pitts, who is now 19, described a common scenario in which she and her siblings did not necessarily have all of the information about why their mother preferred to keep a distance from her ex. They were also affected by cultural pressure for both mothers and children to allow a father to be involved, Pitts says. “I think if you want your kids to be raised without a mom or dad, or maybe you’re getting, ‘Oh, you can’t do that. Because, you know, they need a mom, or they need a dad, or it’s not fair.’ You know, I think there’s a lot of pressure overall…. I think it’s really hard as a mom to say, ‘No, sorry, you’re not having a dad in your life.’”

Yet the history of abuse in the family was severe. In addition to abusing Howard physically, sexually and verbally, Howard’s ex-partner had also sexually abused two of her daughters, Pitts and Miranda Frost.

The family tried multiple times to report the abuse, Pitts explained, but when she and her mother reached out to the police for help, they did not receive any support. Frost also reported her abuse, but said in a previous news interview that her report was dismissed because of insufficient evidence.

Pitts says that she was raised to trust the police. “I thought when I told someone, especially law enforcement, there would be help for me directly right there,” she said. “I would feel protected and helped and like the bad guy was gonna get caught.”

Instead of the help and safety she was expecting, Pitts said, the police told her to go back to the house and try to entrap her father, by wearing a mic if possible.

Cynthia Zimmer, the district attorney in charge of the case, claims — like most other DAs — to be a strong advocate for crime victims. Yet, according to Courtney Morris, an organizer with the Wendy Howard Defense Committee, no services have been offered for Howard’s daughters.

“I think that through this, that has been probably one of Wendy’s largest grievances, is that they never reached out to Miranda or Bayley,” said Morris. “They came forward with their stories. Which was so brave, to go into the public view and say, ‘This is what happened to us,’ which has been so difficult, but this family has been committed to advocacy. And not once did the county ever reach out to Miranda and Bayley to say, ‘how can we get you some support services for what you’ve been through?’”

“This system failed us here,” Pitts said. “And they don’t want that to be out.”

The trial for Wendy Howard, is scheduled for August 29, 2022. Along with first-degree murder, Howard has been charged with a gun enhancement. According to a community-based research report by Survived & Punished, it is common for women like Howard to receive such sentencing enhancement charges, since “women who defend themselves from men in the context of domestic violence are more likely to do so using weapons like guns and knives than men who commit domestic homicide.”

Truthout was not able to speak with Wendy Howard because she has been prohibited by the judge from speaking publicly about the case.

Wendy Howard’s family is hardly alone in its experience. When Pitts first came forward about her abuse, she says that her social media was “flooded” with other survivors saying that they had been abused by parents, family friends and neighbors. Pitts said she received messages saying, “I wish someone would have believed me. I wish my mom was as brave as your mom and stood up for me.”

Prison Is Gender-Based Violence, Not Protection From It

Many people believe that the state tries to protect victims of gender-based violence, in part because public disinformation campaigns are so constant. District attorneys run on campaign platforms of protecting victims of domestic violence, and copaganda like Law and Order constantly portrays police, courts and prosecutors as having a deep desire to stop sexual and domestic violence and do everything in their power to protect survivors of gender-based violence.

Unlike on TV, only 5 percent of sexual assault perpetrators are ever arrested. Meanwhile, most women in prison are themselves victims of abuse. Research indicates that between 60 and 94 percent of women are survivors prior to entering prison. The violence continues behind bars. A random sample of 130 women in the Central California Women’s Facility found over 80 reports of sexual harassment and assault at the hands of guards, and dozens of reports of physical violence; all of the women reported being routinely addressed by correctional officers as “bitches,” “hos,” and other disparaging terms, including over the PA. Transgender prisoners are victimized inside prison at nine or more times the rate of other prisoners, and the system is racially biased against women of color, particularly Black and Native women, who are more likely to be incarcerated and more negatively impacted by mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence.

The reality, says Alisa Bierria, is that “the relationship between gender-based violence and the carceral state is one of alignment, they are integral to each other rather than in opposition.” Bierria is the co-founder of Survived & Punished, a national coalition that organizes around participatory defense campaigns and works to support and decriminalize survivors, with the ultimate aim of abolishing gender-based violence, policing, prisons, and deportations.

In its recent report, Survived & Punished highlights that self-defense is “an ongoing practice of survival.” One way that survivors continue to defend themselves after criminalization is by telling their own stories and “affirming the truth of their experience of violence.” Placing a gag order on survivors like Howard is yet another way that the state continues to negate her ability to defend herself.

Morris says that one of the goals of participatory defense campaigns is to highlight the fact of criminalized survival, namely that “it is so unfair that a person should be in a position to choose between their life and their freedom, and why that is just a story that is hit on repeat with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.”

Participatory Defense Campaigns Grow From Survivors Supporting Each Other

Some hope can be found, however, in participatory defense campaigns: mass, grassroots organizing campaigns that are focused on demanding freedom for and providing material support to individual people who have been criminalized.

In We Do This ’Til We Free Us, renowned abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba notes in the struggle toward an abolitionist future, it is necessary to focus on the needs of people currently experiencing the violence of the prison industrial complex. “Opportunities to free people from prison through popular support, without throwing other prisoners under the bus, should be seized,” she writes. The logic of an abolitionist participatory defense campaign is to show that what is happening to a particular individual targeted by the criminal legal system is something that happens regularly, rather than being an exception.

Participatory defense campaigns may focus on one case at a time, but the connection and solidarity between campaigns — particularly the way that survivors support and are inspired by each other — is also a hallmark of the organizing tactic.

Wendy Howard, for example, is not just a strong advocate for herself, but is also engaged in support work for other survivors.

Howard’s defense campaign began with her family, who immediately began organizing against the injustice of her charges, according to Pitts. But after Howard was released a few months later — once her bail was reduced from $1 million to $500,000 — she began to connect with other criminalized survivors.

Morris says that Howard came to meetings and events in support of other imprisoned people, not to share her own story, but simply to be an activist. “I think that Wendy had a lot of preconceived notions about the types of people that would be incarcerated. And then she was incarcerated. And the people that she was with helped her keep her head above water during that time.”

In a news interview shortly after her release on bail, Howard told a reporter from a local ABC affiliate of the support she received inside the jail. “Those girls mean everything to me and I will never forget them,” she said. “They were a huge support system for when I was in there and I don’t know if I would be standing here as strong as I am without them.”

Pitts talks about how her mom is “really, really, really into advocating” and “has all of these friends who you know, were in jail, or they’re out of jail now. And she spends all her time like making stickers for them, and coloring books, and cards.” Morris adds that Howard has “just been really dedicated to system-impacted people since she got out, so she stays in touch with a lot of people on the inside and out,” including offering rides to people being released and staying in touch with people’s families. “I think that’s why in her own campaigning, she developed a ‘this is all of our fight’ [mentality] because it’s not just about her own self-advocacy, it’s about how structurally harmful that system is.”

One goal of participatory defense campaigns for survivors, Bierria says, is “helping us to make this shift in common sense when it comes to how the systems treat survivors.” As an organizer, Bierria says she has heard countless times from survivors who believed that they had a right to defend their own lives and are shocked that they are being targeted for prosecution. “It’s so painful to hear survivors say, you know, ‘I believe in the system, I thought it would protect me and here I am, in prison for the rest of my life,’” she said. “Defense campaigns want to make this truth about carceral punishment, that it is an anti-survivor structure — we want to lift that up and spread that word as far as possible. And I think that that is an important strategy towards feminist abolition.”

Defense campaigns also engage people directly at the local level “to participate in the practice of freedom,” Bierria said. These campaigns do not ask people to just take in the disturbing news and then go back to their lives; they ask people to participate in changing the outcome. “It’s about connecting people to a sustained, regular practice,” she went on — whether that’s a big action, or a small one, like following Survived & Punished to find out what legal fundraiser they can support each week.

People involved in the Wendy Howard Defense Committee, which for legal reasons is completely separate from Howard herself, are engaged in fundraising for her legal defense fund, circulating a petition demanding the Kern County DA drop all charges against Howard, sharing information about Howard’s case and ways to support her on social media and with their networks, and giving press conferences about their activities. The committee also uplifts and shares information from other defense campaigns, like that of Tracy McCarter and Leah Eggleson (who was recently found not guilty on all charges except for unlawful possession of a firearm).

The ultimate goal of the Wendy Howard Defense Committee is to have the charges dropped. This would allow Howard to remain at home with her children and grandchildren, where Pitts tells Truthout that her mother loves making roller skating videos with her grandkids. And then, many committee participants will move on to supporting the next participatory defense campaign, until everyone is free.

If we don’t restore majority rule—and to do so we must vanquish the tyranny of a corporate-backed minority—we will never solve climate change, inequality, balanced gun control, or ensure the sanctity and security of our elections.

As if the Electoral College weren’t antidemocratic enough already, the Supreme Court now looks poised to rule in favor of state legislatures deciding the outcome of the presidential election. That’s good news for Republicans and bad news for democracy.

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Amy Coney Barrett talks with Clarence Thomas during her swearing-in ceremony to be US Supreme Court associate justice on the South Lawn of the White House on October 26, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images)

In 2022, it’s time to update the old truism and acknowledge that three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and bad news from the Supreme Court.

It’s gotten difficult to keep track of all of the court’s assaults on freedom and democracy, but just this year the court has ruled against abortion rights, gun control, separation of church and state, and the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon emissions. The court also attacked the Fifth Amendment, eliminating people’s ability to sue police officers who violate their right to an attorney, and the Fourth Amendment, ruling that in at least some cases, law enforcement itself, rather than courts, may review whether officers committed an unreasonable search.

Given the court’s all-out assault this spring and summer, it’s understandable that a case it agreed to hear in its next session has so far flown under the radar. But the court’s decision in Moore v. Harper is likely to be even more consequential in its long campaign against democracy. Worse, it could easily set the country up for a serious and potentially violent political crisis following the 2024 presidential election.

Nothing is certain yet, but the most likely outcome of Moore v. Harper is the Supreme Court ruling that state legislatures can appoint presidential electors however they wish, possibly even with no regard for the candidate who got the most votes in their state — a legal interpretation known as the “independent state legislature theory (or doctrine).”

In short, independent state legislature theory holds that when setting election rules and appointing presidential electors, state legislatures may act “independently” of the governor, their state’s constitution, or state and federal election laws. The Brennan Center explains:

The dispute hinges on how to understand the word “legislature.” The long-running understanding is that it refers to each state’s general lawmaking processes, including all the normal procedures and limitations. So if a state constitution subjects legislation to being blocked by a governor’s veto or citizen referendum, election laws can be blocked via the same means. And state courts must ensure that laws for federal elections, like all laws, comply with their state constitutions.

Proponents of the independent state legislature theory reject this traditional reading, insisting that these clauses give state legislatures exclusive and near-absolute power to regulate federal elections. The result? When it comes to federal elections, legislators would be free to violate the state constitution and state courts couldn’t stop them.

Such a ruling could permit states to go even further than they already have in gerrymandering election districts and suppressing voters in order to favor conservatives. But it gets worse: the ruling could also allow legislatures to overrule presidential election results entirely and appoint presidential electors of their choosing.

The Electoral College is already undemocratic, giving voters in rural, usually more conservative states far more influence per person than populous states. In fact, the current reactionary majority on the Supreme Court was only possible because Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite millions more people voting for Hilary Clinton. But a ruling based on the independent state legislature doctrine, likely to come out in 2023 or early summer 2024, would allow Republican-controlled state legislatures to remove presidential voters from the equation entirely — even after the election has already taken place.

Because presidential electors are not officially appointed until after election results come in, Republicans in state legislatures would be able to wait until they saw the election results before making their move. Traditionally, elector appointments have been dry formalities, generally not even making the news, because every state has simply designated electors who support the candidate who won the most votes in their state. However, empowered by a ruling based on the independent state legislature doctrine, it is far from clear that Republican state legislatures would continue to follow this tradition.

If the Republican presidential candidate wins the electoral college in 2024 by winning the most votes in enough states, Republican state legislatures would of course simply let the results stand. But if the Democratic candidate wins enough votes to win the electoral college, as Joe Biden did in 2020, a favorable Supreme Court ruling in Moore v. Harper would allow the legislatures to act “independently” and nominate electors pledged to vote for the Republican candidate — likely using a thin pretext of supposed voter fraud. In this scenario, both the popular vote and the results of the Electoral College vote as it has been practiced for two centuries would be thrown out.

This might sound far-fetched, and of course we can’t yet know for certain how the court will rule or what legislatures will do. But there are three things to keep in mind. First is the recent history of the court, which has shown itself willing to trample on legal and political traditions and its own previous rulings in order to advance a far-right vision of American society.

Second, the independent state legislature theory actually has more basis in the Constitution than many of the other reactionary rulings the court has issued recently. Specifically, Article II, Section I, dealing with presidential elections, reads, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. . . .”

As the Brennan Center pointed out in its summary, the word “Legislature” has traditionally been understood to mean the entire process of lawmaking and governing. But the court’s “originalist” majority stakes its intellectual legitimacy on its claim to take the plain language of the Constitution at face value based on the supposed intent of the Constitution’s authors. Given the language in Article II, it requires a much smaller logical leap to reach independent state legislature theory than many other rulings the court has made in the recent past. In fact, the theory has already made an appearance at the Supreme Court: in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case in which the court handed Bush the presidency.

Third, and most ominous, is the political context in which the Supreme Court will issue its ruling on Moore v. Harper. For decades, but especially since the rise of Donald Trump, the Right has preached a gospel of “democracy if we win, fraud if we lose,” in which only Republican voters are truly “legitimate” and Democratic victories are the result of either “illegitimate” (usually black or immigrant) voters or fraud on the part of election officials. Donald Trump shifted this strategy into overdrive, pressuring election officials around the country to overturn the results and encouraging a violent insurrection at the Capitol on the day Joe Biden was certified the winner.

While this pressure campaign and improvised attempt at a coup d’état failed to keep him in power, it convinced his base: two-thirds of Republicans say they believe Biden’s victory was illegitimate. And next time, Republicans will be much more organized. The entire Republican Party either believes or finds it prudent to pretend to believe that the only explanation for Republicans losing elections is Democrats’ cheating. They have already introduced hundreds of bills across almost every state to give state legislatures more control over elections, suggesting they know what’s coming. Meanwhile, diehard Trump supporters have been filling seats on formerly apolitical county election boards, usually with the explicit intention of “stopping fraud” — meaning, ensuring Trump or his successor wins.

Not only was the Constitution itself designed to limit democracy, but the reactionary majority of the Supreme Court has shown it will take every opportunity to limit democracy and personal freedom even further, with whatever legal theory is convenient to secure the result they want. Refuting the Right on legal grounds may be important in the abstract, but at least at this stage, it is ultimately pointless. The lifelong reactionary activists on the court are determined to remake American society for the worse. They have, by design, no accountability to anyone and they do not care what any of us think. The only way to stop them is to find a way to make the costs of undermining democracy too high for them to bear.

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The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, has warned that the global economic outlook “has darkened significantly,” emphasizing that, regarding a global recession, “we cannot rule it out.”

IMF Says Global Economic Outlook ‘Has Darkened Significantly’

Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), discussed the global economic outlook and the prospect of a global recession in an interview with Reuters Wednesday.

Commenting on the global economy, the IMF managing director said:

The outlook since our last update in April has darkened significantly.

She cited several factors, including a more universal spread of inflation, more substantial interest rate hikes, China’s economic growth slowdown, and mounting sanctions related to the Russia-Ukraine war.

In April, the IMF slashed its global growth forecast from an estimated 6.1% in 2021 to 3.6% in 2022 and 2023. This was “0.8 and 0.2 percentage points lower for 2022 and 2023 than projected in January,” the Fund noted at the time.

The IMF will be cutting its global growth forecast further late this month, Georgieva noted, adding that it will be the third downgrade this year.

Global Recession Cannot Be Ruled Out

When asked about the prospect of a global recession, the IMF managing director said:

The risk has gone up so we cannot rule it out.

“We are in very choppy waters,” she continued. Investors are becoming increasingly concerned about recession risks.

Georgieva noted that recent economic data showed that some large economies, including those of China and Russia, had contracted in the second quarter. She cautioned that the risks were even higher in 2023.

The IMF boss said:

It’s going to be a tough ’22, but maybe even a tougher 2023 … Recession risks increased in 2023.

Georgieva believes that slower economic growth may be a “necessary price to pay,” citing the urgent and pressing need to restore price stability.

She opined: “We need to create the same strong level of coordination between central banks and finance ministries so they provide support in a very targeted way … and don’t weaken what monetary policies are aiming to achieve.”

In June, World Bank President David Malpass warned about a possible global recession. “For many countries, a recession will be hard to avoid … This is the sharpest slowdown in 80 years,” he said.

What do you think about the comments by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva? Let us know in the comments section below.

Revolutionary organizations provide avenues for addressing the issues that are affecting communities, welcoming conversations that build trust and respect through political education, group process, consensus, and mass building. Members of revolutionary organizations are principal participants and decision-makers working towards change. If this isn’t happening in an organization, then that organization is not interested in building “another world”. That organization is not for you. . . .

The post On Joining an Organization appeared first on Hood Communist.

This report was written and compiled between It’s Going Down editors and folks directly on the ground.

Over the last several days, police and local officials in Akron, Ohio, have carried out a counter-insurgency campaign of wide-scale repression against largely Black demonstrators, following the brutal police murder of Jayland Walker, 25, who was shot over 60 times after fleeing from police during a traffic stop. After being shot, police then handcuffed Walker before attempting to administer aid and transporting him to a hospital, where he was then pronounced dead on arrival.

Since protests kicked off following the release of police footage of the shooting, the city and its police have responded with tear-gas attacks, instituting a curfew, and savagely beating, gassing and arresting protesters outside of the local jail, police department HQ, and in the Downtown. Local officials, aided by mainstream media outlets parroting police talking points, have attempted to center the focus on the “violence” of several broken windows on Sunday night as justification for the widespread crackdown and ongoing attacks on journalists and protesters with batons and chemical weapons.

The brutal crackdown comes a little over two years since the George Floyd uprising, as anger against heavily militarized, unaccountable, and deadly police has only grown in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre. Democrats, such as Akron’s mayor, Dan Horrigan, are keen to violently suppress these protests before they grow, spread, and strike a chord with the rest of the country.

Protests Begin

Everyone knew pretty intuitively Sunday was going to be a hard day. This was the day the body worn camera footage of Jayland Walker’s murder was released by the city, the cops and local government were fucking terrified and there was this general tension in the air. People had once again gathered in front of the injustice center, and things remained peaceful, but loud. Sunday had the largest gathering of people out of all of the previous events folks had seen. This allowed for a little bit of co-optation by liberal elements.

There was a heavy police presence at Akron mayor’s home when came to deliver our demands. Two of our activists were arrested while demanding justice!!#justiceforjaylandwalker #JusticeForJaylandWalker #SayHisName #blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/7RcZnMV0vs

— Freedom BLOC (@thefreedomBLOC) July 4, 2022

Large numbers of the crowd began to march up High St. and by the time they had been marching for a full hour, people back at the injustice center were starting to waver in energy. These marches to nowhere are a deliberate attempt to drain your protest movement of its energy. They drain the marchers, and they weaken the protestors at the main site. Eventually, the marchers returned and were led away a second time shortly after. This is when the police decided to come out with gas masks and tear gas launchers.

Anger grows on the streets of #Akron, #Ohio as riot police shoot off tear-gas and declare an unlawful assembly as crowds gather to protest the police murder of #JaylandWalker. #JusticeforJayland pic.twitter.com/EKxEDm4fLh

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) July 4, 2022

Protestors scrambled to let the marchers know that the police had come out of their den, as numbers were desperately needed up the road. As people began repopulating the streets in front of the injustice center, the pigs started firing tear gas, and slowly marching into the road. This began a mad scramble through the streets; medics washing out people’s eyes with saline and protestors seeking safe places to regroup. Meanwhile, a line of riot cops fired their launchers into the air, so the canisters would arc, putting them in striking range of the crowd. Were some windows smashed? Not until after the cops began their show of force. Were some dumpster fires lit? Sure, but if you can show me one person that got hurt by that dumpster fire I’ll give you a million dollars.

Noise Demonstration Attacked by Tear-Gas Outside of Jail

An interview with one of the peaceful protesters, who was arrested by Akron police. He talks about the treatment that protesters are getting from Akron police when arrested!

Watch Full interview here: https://t.co/1GyT7BKWjc#justiceforjaylandwalker #protest #AkronPolice #BLM pic.twitter.com/XmiK01vPxz

— Freedom BLOC (@thefreedomBLOC) July 6, 2022

49 people were arrested by the police that night, kettled off into unmarked vans, including medics, and including the family of Jayland Walker who have since been released, as of Wednesday. Many report that those arrested were not allowed to make phone calls or receive medical attention and faced brutal conditions. On July 4th, Mayor Dan Horrigan (D) decided then to institute a 9pm to 6am curfew in downtown Akron, even cancelling a July 4th fireworks display. Despite the clamp-down, protests continued throughout the day Monday; including a march and protest on Horrigan’s home, but died off before the curfew was to go into effect.

Reports from #Akron that police have tear-gassed those rallying outside the jail, demanding the release of the “approximately 50 adults” who have been arrested since the start of the #JaylandWalker protests. On Monday, police instilled a curfew + tear-gassed street protests. https://t.co/q8Tr6loSpu

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) July 6, 2022

By Tuesday, a bail fund was set up: $AkronBailFund on CashApp, so if you are interested in helping release protestors, please donate. A noise demonstration was also organized outside of the local jail in solidarity with those arrested over the previous two nights. In response, Akron police mobilized in riot gear and MRAPs once more, attacking protesters with tear-gas and breaking up the protest, despite it taking place outside of the official “curfew” zone.

According to The Enquirer:

The Summit County sheriff’s SWAT team used tear gas late Tuesday night to disperse protesters outside the county jail, where people arrested during demonstrations over the Fourth of July weekend were being held.

The protests were in response to the death of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Akron man who was shot 60 times by eight Akron police officers after he fled a traffic stop June 27.

“We were having a peaceful protest, the next thing I know, they were throwing tear gas at us,” James Crawl, a former wrestling teammate of Walker at Buchtel high school, told the Beacon Journal.

The sheriff’s department said as many as 75 people were protesting and banging on doors at one point outside the jail. The decision to use tear gas was made because protesters were disrupting jail operations, a spokesman said.

In a further effort to destabilize protesters, police began to drop off people whose bail had been paid in yet another unmarked van, at random sites around Akron; some inside of the curfew zone, in order to ensue general chaos among those attempting to do jail support. Again, from The Enquirer:

Sierra Mason, a 24-year-old organizer from Canton, said she followed a sheriff’s cruiser to a Sheetz gas station, where they dropped off bailed-out protesters. She helped take one of the men home. “Instead of releasing these people out front where they would be supported by community, they’re deciding to do this,” she said. “It’s intentional. Instead of being here, they got me driving all over town.”

Jennifer Rogers, a 40-year-old Akron resident, was standing in the parking lot worrying about her 18-year-old son with autism early in the evening. She said she had not been able to get him his medication since his Sunday arrest and had no contact with him. “My son was in there if they haven’t already dropped him off in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “I’m real angry.” She later found him at a Dairy Queen on the West Side, an organizer told the Beacon Journal.

Curfew Lifted, Police Declare Unlawful Assembly, Make Brutal Arrests

On Wednesday, people continued to mobilize in support of those that had been arrested. Despite the curfew being lifted over Downtown, at night law enforcement again brutally attacked protesters rallying outside of the local police HQ, proclaiming it an “unlawful assembly,” shooting chemical agents at protesters on the sidewalk, and beating protesters before arresting them.

cashapp for donations to Akron Bail Fund those arrested marching for #JaylandWalker $AkronBailFund #BlackLivesMatter

— Forest City Anarchists (@FCAnarchists) July 4, 2022

According to posts and videos on social media, both Bianca Austin, the aunt of Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake, Sr, the father of Jacob Blake, who was shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were arrested by Akron police late Wednesday night, with Blake being reportedly hospitalized.

Full video on my TikTok or IG. Akron Police just assaulted and arrested Jacob Blake Sr. Mr Blake has been transported to a local hospital. #freejakeblake #freepressure pic.twitter.com/MbDcVVLlig

— jolly_good_ginger (@jollygoodginger) July 7, 2022

The actions by the Akron police show that the institution of policing has not changed since its inception during slavery as a force designed to capture escaped slaves and break strikes. Far from being a force of protection within the population against violence, the police exist to uphold the power and privilege of an elite class and the settler-colonial racial order of the American project, and are willing to use massive amounts of violence against the broader population to ensure that this ‘order’ stays protected.

Simple logic tells us that those atop a societal hierarchy will provide rewards for professionals—be they clergy or psychiatrists—who promote an ideology that maintains the status quo, and that the ruling class will do everything possible to manipulate the public to believe that the social-economic-political status quo is natural. If a population believes that its More

The post Marx, Spinoza, and the Political Implications of Contemporary Psychiatry appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Ross Barkan

The post How Many Battalions Does the Left Have in New York State? appeared first on The Nation.