Shoutout to Teen Vogue, a publication I honestly haven’t frequented, for including this illuminating interview with Alec Karakatsanis, the founder and executive director of the Civil Rights Corps. Karakatsanis and the Civil Rights Corps are dedicated to identifying and calling out copaganda, which is of course any depiction of police officers meant to paint them in a positive light while ignoring the negative realities.
If you’ve ever read The Mourning’s coverage of law enforcement and thought to yourself, “Oh dearie me, that does seem a bit harsh”, you’d probably benefit from reading Alec’s article “Why “Crime” Isn’t the Question and Police Aren’t the Answer”. Rather than thinking of our legal system as one prioritizing ‘criminal justice’, it’s more helpful to understand it as a vast and incredibly profitable punishment bureaucracy from police and police unions to prosecutors to all of the multibillion-dollar corporations that make billions of dollars off of the misery of the incarcerated. This is the kind of system that we have created and sustained in the US and it's ideologically bankrupt.
Alec shares loads of insightful wisdom in this interview, but I especially appreciate how he centers the question of what do people and families and communities need to be able to flourish? For so long we’ve been told that violent crime is the reason families and communities are suffering, but Karakatsanis chooses to delve deeper into societal definitions of safety and stability. Rather than pouring more money into police budgets and arming more idiots with weapons of war, perhaps our focus should be on investing in things like health care, housing, early childhood education, safe, clean, sustainable places for children to play, after-school music and art and theater programs. What a novel concept.
Side Items
Presidential Sex Offender: Yesterday, a jury found the former president and snake oil salesman liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll, ordering him to pay her $5 million. Of course the case was a civil trial, which means that Trump isn’t subject to any prison time. The verdict does indicate that jurors believed Carroll’s claim that Trump assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-90s. So now we’ve got a republican frontrunner who’s twice-impeached and guilty of sexual abuse
Another Scammer Nabbed: Our fabricating old friend representative George Santos of Long Island was arrested yesterday on federal criminal charges ahead of an expected court appearance. The indictment says that Santos induced his supporters to donate to a company under the false pretense that the money would be used to support his campaign. Instead, the scamming sonofagun used it for personal expenses like luxury designer clothes and to pay off his credit cards. Just some minor scammery, nothing to see here
Turmoil in Pakistan: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested and dragged from court earlier this week as he appeared to face charges in multiple corruption cases. Political tensions in the country have dramatically escalated as violent demonstrations of his supporters have grown in the days since his arrest. Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022 but remains the leading opposition figure in Pakistan