It's very frustrating watching knowing that quite literally everything bad that they said would happen in this hearing does in fact happen. They even directly point out that more cops will not reduce crime. I know 1994 and 2024 are two radically different time periods but goddamn. This bill has was fundamental to the expansion of the carceral and surveillance state.
It's a really long watch but I think it's worth watching. It's very long and dry and boring, but it's very insightful. I have seen clips of this C-SPAN broadcast in many different video political essays and such and never have I seen it in its entirety.
I think about this not just as it's an election year, or not even really about the DNC; Instead, I think about this is respect to all of the people who were hurt when they cranked up the police machine to 11.
( Just a reminder this isn't just a POC issue either. "Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group...")
"This bill has was fundamental to the expansion of the carceral and surveillance state."
Practically a milestone.
The 1990s was a "counter-revolution" in some senses from the civil rights era.
Clinton was Reaganism on steroids. At least, we had the anti-apartheid movement in the United States which culiminated in Congress passing sanctions on apartheid South Africa (back in 1986). Compare that with the next decade, the 1990s, and you begin to see that while neoliberalism may have been introduced 40 or 50 years ago, it doesn't really gain a foothold like it did during the 1990s. And that included the mass expansion of prison labor and a type of neo-slavery. The 1990s are the beginning of that.
(Not that prison slavery wasn't present before, but I think it's good to mark milestones and when things are an "escalation" of some sort.)
Clintonism was the moment that large-D Democrats submitted themselves whole-heartedly to the neo-conservative revanchist white supremacy project. This was the dam breaking for civil rights leaders of the era.
For all we talk about guys like Malcolm X and Fred Hampton, I have to wonder how many black civil rights leaders of the 90s/00s/10s we'll never get to hear about because it was not in vogue to document and evangelize their message. Instead, we got a bunch of old Al Shaprton style hacks doing MSNBC talking head shows, a brash new Obama who was willing to put a black face on a white supremacist project, and a bunch of black prisoners/victims of police brutality who became martyrs for the cause only after they'd had their lives taken.
I also can't ignore how much of the African American proletariat has been incorporated within the system of criminalization and what that's done to civil rights as a project. In Houston, in particular, its easy to miss how many beat cops and prison guards are - themselves - black men, radicalized and mobilized into conflict with their own neighbors. We really are paying one half of the country to fight the other half. Black politicians in my city surround themselves with black security guards and allies in the HPD, in no small part because they see themselves at odds with the more overt white nationalist project of the state (and, by turns, federal) government. And these are the folks who are supposed to represent the community at-large.
When Minneapolis finally decided to go in and rip apart George Floyd square they got a group called "Agape", a black, idk, street intervention group? I'm not sure what to call it. But they got them to go in first, while dozens of cops waited just out of sight, so what the cameras would see was people from the square yelling at black men from a christian organization, instead of fighting off a wall of cops. And, meanwhile, dozens and dozens of cops, armed and armored, ready to pour in the moment they had an excuse. I guess, from a marketing standpoint, it was really slick.
Nothing to add, just want to point out this is an great historical context.
Thank you!
Yeah, I try to demarcate certain periods in history (while also trying to unify them in their, well, context with each other).