In the Ten-Point Program, Huey
P. Newton and Bobby Seale wrote a list of 10 demands that served as the
cornerstone for the organization. In 2 points, they demand the end of police brutality and murder of
black people, and freedom for incarcerated black people.
Seeing the
end to police brutality as one of the points made me think about how police
brutality is still a predominant issue in our society today and there doesn’t seem
to be any progress being made to it. When I saw the list of 10 points, it reminded me of the Black Lives Matter list
where a 10-point program was introduced solely dedicated to ending police
brutality and demanded demilitarization and body cams installments among other
points. The Black Lives Matter movement has been instrumental in shedding light
on this as a toxic social issue and utilizing social media as a means to educate
and reach an audience that wasn’t available before.
Newton and Seale talk about the unfair
incarceration of black people and they demand they be released due to not
receiving a just and impartial trial. This is tied into the issue of police
brutality because the justice system itself is so broken and unjust that police
brutality is justified within the system. It’s like a downward spiral of injustice.
This also reminds me of an article that explained how the prison industrial
complex is an extension of slavery and the criminalization of blackness is an
extension of blackness as property.
13th Trailer
The first
thing that came to mind while reading this was Ava DuVernay’s documentary, 13th,
which discusses the issue of the prison industrial complex and the disadvantage
black people face. This was my first introduction to the realities of black
people in the criminal justice system and I remember crying and being angry the
first time I watched it. The documentary said that 1 in 3 black men at some
point in their lifetime will be incarcerated and it goes on to describe how
unjust the incarceration process is, from broken windows policing and racial
profiling to the inhumane treatment in the system.
I want to
discuss the Black Lives Matter 10-point plan more in class and analyze it from
a feminist perspective.
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