We, the rank and file and leadership of UAW Local 2322 are appalled and horrified by the white supremacist murder of George Floyd by four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25 2020. We are writing to assert that Black Lives Matter. We demand that the four officers responsible for this murder, Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao be held fully accountable for their terror. We demand Justice for George Floyd, his family and friends. We call for an end to white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and police terror. Until we achieve these goals, we demand:
- That UMass Amherst sever all ties with both the UMass Amherst Police Department and Amherst Police. GEO/UAW 2322 has already called for the end to police presence on campus (2018) and as a Local we recognize that our largest shop has been ignored on this and that the University continues to cultivate relationships with police in ways which have demonstrably harmed the campus community. We reaffirm our commitment to the principal that the police and all arms of law enforcement-type agencies have no place on college campuses.
- That the city of Springfield, Massachusetts adopt Police Liability Insurance to eliminate violent police officers. Community organizations in Springfield have circulated a petition to this effect. We call on our members to sign this petition authored by Out Now.
- The disaffiliation of unions representing police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and Department of Corrections officers from the Western Mass Area Labor Federation and the AFL-CIO. Police unions enact and enable violence against Black communities and communities of color, and for this reason there can be no worker solidarity between survivors and perpetrators of police violence.
- The disarmament and defunding of local police departments, with the redistribution of resources to democratically community-controlled education, healthcare and housing infrastructure.
“I can’t breathe.” George Floyd’s last words are a haunting repetition of Eric Garner’s last words in 2014 as he was pinned to the ground and asphyxiated by Daniel Pantaleo, a police officer who was ultimately not indicted for this murder. Earlier in 2020, we witnessed the murder of Ahmaud Arbery by Gregory McMichael, an ex-police officer and his son Travis McMichael.
While all of us struggle with fear of losing our breath in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, George Floyd’s brutal murder is a tragic reminder that Black people’s right to breath has always been imperiled so long as white supremacy and anti-Blackness structure the way we live and die. Here is a plague we have the power to end.
As white supremacy bends hell to repeat itself, so, too, are we hell-bent on resisting and dismantling it. In the words of former GEO Co-Chair Armanthia Duncan, “We need revolutionary praxis that ushers us into active coalescing aimed at eliminating the anti-Black ideologies at the heart of this racist violence.” In keeping with this tenet, we join in solidarity with the protesters of Minneapolis, Minnesota and all across the United States who are burning and purging their way to a new world, a world built on the principles of racial and economic justice.
As part of our praxis of repeated revolutionary struggle, we join in solidarity with those who have struggled before us. We recognize that our unions and universities are microcosms of the society that we live in and must address the anti-Blackness in our communities.
Please find below a statement on police killings in 2016 authored by former GEO Co-Chair Armanthia Duncan.
Justice for George Floyd. Abolish Police. Abolish ICE. Black Lives Matter.
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: [GEO Members] A letter from your Co-Chair on the recent police killings
Date: 2016-09-22 12:09
From: “GEO, UAW Local 2322” <geo@external.umass.edu>
To: members@external.umass.edu
Dear GEO members,
I am writing this letter to express the hurt and anger I am feeling about the continuing problem of anti-black state sanctioned violence. I am exhausted with mourning the loss of black people at the hands of the U.S. police force. Once again, we are learning about police killings of black people via the media including: 13-yr old Tyre King in Ohio, 40-yr old Terrance Crutcher in Oklahoma, and most recently on Tuesday night 43-yr old Keith Lamont Scott in North Carolina. In fact, in the month of September there has, so far, been 61 people killed by police officers.
Of all people killed at the hands of police, blacks are killed at a higher rate than any other race. Online news source, The Guardian, noted that in 2015 black people were killed at twice the rate of white, Hispanic, and Native Americans, and of those killed 25% of Blacks were unarmed compared with 17% of whites. The national spotlight on these incidents have created a hyper-awareness of police shootings, but the violence enacted on members of the black community by police is a systemic problem with a long history. Though we often discuss in the academy how racism creates and perpetuates social inequalities that deprive racialized minorities of equal access to resources needed to secure an optimal life, we rarely conceptualize these inequalities as a violence carried out against these communities, whether indirect or direct as is the case with police killings.
These sustained acts of violence committed by the criminal justice system against communities of color, is in large part due to its framing of black people as criminal and Black communities as hubs of criminal activity for its own profit through the deployment of racist stereotypes and the use of skewed statistical data. The American mainstream media assists in this process of criminalization by oversaturating us with images and narratives of Blacks as suspects and whites as victims of crime. Additionally, despite statistically low violent crime rates, the fear of crime and lawlessness permeates American society. As a result of this fear, Americans support policies and practices they see as “tough on crime” which typically translate to containing and detaining, by any and all means available, those associated with criminality. Those labeled as “criminal” are then targeted by the system, and either become trapped in the revolving doors of the prison industrial complex or victims of extrajudicial homicide by representative actors for the system. This preoccupation with crime coupled with the criminalization of Blackness means that for Black people no actions are required to pose a threat there is no such thing as appropriate behavior or appropriate attire because it is the Black body itself that is the threat and thus any means of control, up to and including violence is righteous and justifiable. In other words, it is the mere introduction or presence of a Black body into a space that necessitates clutched purses in elevators, constant surveillance in retail stores, locked car doors when we drive through “that side of town” and keeping 911 on speed dial. Ultimately, Black people in the U.S must contend with a white mainstream American imagination that sees us as innately dangerous and criminal.
So, it is in this context, that we see an overrepresentation of law enforcement agencies in particular communities, and such repressive practices such as “stop and frisk”. This pervasive fear of the Black criminal encourages police officers to be aggressive, and oftentimes violent, when interacting with Black communities in order to squelch this looming threat. And should the officers ever be called to question about the harassment, beating or killing of members of the community, we see time and again that they only need to argue that they “felt” threatened to avoid consequence and retribution. Also, to be clear, this “right” is not limited to sworn agents of the state, in fact vigilante citizens can be deputized to “protect and serve” communities in the absence of the police and allowed to use violence against any perceived danger should they see fit.
In closing, as Black people continue to be shot down in the streets of this country by police, we have moved beyond conversations about compliance, respectability, and any other narratives that seek to redirect culpability away from police officers to the victims. There are no self-policing practices that black people have yet to engage in that could shield them from lethal encounters with power tripping police, cloaking anti-black racism with irrational specious fear. And to be honest, I am beyond the politically correct niceties typically invoked in conversations around state-level violence. We need revolutionary praxis that ushers us into active coalescing aimed at eliminating the anti-Black ideologies at the heart of this racist violence.
In radical solidarity,
Armanthia Duncan
2016 GEO Co-Chair
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