Cont’d from above...
Week Four
The statue of Christopher Columbus at City Hall in Columbus, Ohio will be removed.
The city of Rochester, NY is cutting $3.6 million from the police budget, cutting the incoming police class by half, and removing all police from schools.
Colorado passed several police reforms, most notably allowing police to be held personally liable for civil rights violations (i.e. ending qualified immunity).
The King County Labor Council in Seattle voted to expel the Seattle Police Officers Guild, freeing the labor movement of 1,300 cops.
The NYPD announced it would disband its extremely racist plainclothes anti-crime units.
The West Contra Costa Unified School District in the Bay Area voted unanimously to end contracts with police, redirecting $1.5 million to support African-American student achievement.
Seattle City Council unanimously passed legislation banning Seattle police from using or purchasing teargas, blast balls, rubber bullets, and several other weapons.
The statue of Thomas Jefferson, who enslaved and brutalized human beings, was torn down at Jefferson high school in Portland Oregon.
Juneteenth was declared an official public holiday in Philadelphia, and an official paid state holiday in Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia,
The statue of Cecil Rhodes, the infamous British imperialist and white supremacist, at the University of Oxford is being removed.
One of the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor will be fired.
The cop who murdered Rayshard Brooks–who had already been fired–was charged with felony murder.
Three Confederate monuments were removed from downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.
The rebellion is breathing antiracist life into the labor movement, with over five hundred strikes recorded in its first three weeks, and more antiracist workplace actions being organized.
A political strike against racism and police terror carried out by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union shut down west coast ports from Washington state to San Diego on Juneteenth.
In the midst of ungovernable rebellion against racism, an overwhelmingly conservative Supreme Court of the United States took landmark votes protecting LGBTQ workers on the job and blocking Trump’s bid to end the DACA program. We consider these victories inseparable from the mass disruptive power of the antiracist uprising.
Week Five
The Oakland school district disbanded its police department and allocated 2.5 million dollars to student programs.
The San Francisco Board of Education voted unanimously to end its contract with police and declared San Francisco schools “sanctuary space from law enforcement.”
The Mississippi legislature voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from their state flag.
272 cops in New York City have filed for retirement since the beginning of the rebellion. Unfortunately their positions will probably be filled, but demoralized cops quitting is undoubtedly a movement victory.
The governor of Colorado overrode the decision of the district attorney and reopened an investigation into the killing of Elijah McClain in police custody from August of last year.
Seventeen correctional officers were disciplined–only a slap on the wrist, and hardly enough–for the death of Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, a trans-woman who died in custody due their negligence last year.
St. Paul School Board voted to end its contract with the St. Paul Police Department.
More monuments to colonizers and slavers have fallen: The statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City has been removed. The City of Philadelphia will remove a statue of Christopher Columbus in Marconi Plaza. Protesters toppled and set ablaze a statue of a confederate general in Washington D.C.
Seattle Public Schools voted unanimously to suspend their partnership with the Seattle Police department indefinitely.
Princeton University will remove racist president Woodrow Wilson’s name from one of their schools.
This is certainly a partial list, but it is reflective of the massive shifts and concrete gains that the rebellion has propelled from the realm of the unthinkable into reality. These gains, like any reform, are partial and tenuous. They are far from perfect. They are concessions thrown out by a system being contested trying to save itself. Their ultimate impact is yet to be settled. But they reflect how quickly things can change when people take action from below, disrupting business as usual through often illegal action, outside the designated and sanctioned channels. These wins, and surely more to come, are products of a struggle from below, fueled by rage and fire, celebration and joy. And we are just getting started.
This list is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.
https://rampantmag.com/2020/06/08/re...a-list-so-far/