US Culture of Violence and Mass Shootings Starts With The Police

Colombia Elections Go To Second Round, Boston Schools Face Threat of State Takeover, Social Media Monitoring Didn’t Stop Uvalde Shooting

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by James Patrick Jordan is National Co-Coordinator for the Alliance for Global Justice to discuss the results of the recent election for president in Colombia and the threat of Rodolfo Hernandez winning the next round, what a victory from Historic Pact candidates Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez might mean for Colombia and how the US may seek to co-opt and undermine their plans, why the revolving door of the tactics of repression make international solidarity with Colombia important.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Nino Brown, an elementary school teacher and organizer with Reds In Ed and the Boston Jericho movement to discuss the struggle against state receivership of Boston schools waged by Boston teachers, how underfunding is central to many of the problems that the state government claims that the receivership would fix, the record of these state takeovers in Massachusetts and how they have negatively impacted the students in those districts, and the role of the Boston Teachers Union in fighting back against this state takeover and for more resources for students.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by technologist Chris Garaffa, the editor of TechforthePeople.org, co-host of the ReBoot podcast to discuss Twitter’s use of two-factor authentication data to target ads to users, Democrats asking Google to stop collecting location data that could put women who receive abortions in danger and the disturbing ease with which such location data can be purchased, how the push to the digitization of learning has worked to harm students, and social media monitoring software used by many schools to try to prevent school shootings that has not been proven to be effective and the privacy concerns that come with them.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Kamau Franklin, organizer with Community Movement Builders in Atlanta and co-founder of Black Power Media to discuss Joe Biden’s promises to pursue gun regulations after the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and what is behind the culture of violence and weapons in the US, the cooptation of popular demands to defund the police by the capitalist class and how the media is attempting to frame narratives around policing in light of police inaction at the school shooting in Uvalde, how US propaganda against Asian nations has historically contributed and continues to contribute to anti-Asian violence, and the myth of capitalism as a means of liberation for working and oppressed people.

We'd love to get your feedback at [e-mail]

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik.