If President Biden is serious about racial equity, his administration must confront the culture of white supremacy by changing how Black activists are policed and stopping the FBI and local police from labeling and targeting Black activists as “extremists.” The U.S. criminal legal system is an offshoot of our ugly history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, designed to control Black people through brutality, mass incarceration, and over-policing. The FBI’s practices trickle down and become pervasive at every level of policing. Its racist BIE threat assessment validates officers’ unjustified fear of the movement for Black lives and offers cover for militarized police presence at Black Lives Matter protests. In case after case, police departments have shielded white supremacists within their ranks, even as they’ve rolled out policies that harm Black lives. The FBI isn’t trained in ideology nor practice to seriously confront white supremacist violence. Without congressional leaders stepping in to use their oversight powers to hold them accountable, the FBI is free to continue undermining our movements. MediaJustice Campaign Strategies Director Myaisha Hayes and our friend Sandy Fulton from Free press explain why we need congressional efforts to investigate where and how the police use surveillance resources.
Read the full article from Myaisha Hayes and Sandy Fulton in Prism.
