this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Abolition of police and prisons

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Abolish is to flourish! Against the prison industrial complex and for transformative justice.

See Critical Resistance's definitions below:

The Prison Industrial Complex

The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.

Abolition

PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.

Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

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[–] wildcherry 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Funny germans. They had a new Potsdam conference a few weeks ago but they go after retired revolutionaries lol. Priorities.

[–] MrMakabar 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Retired from activism and she went on to just do unpolitical armed roberies of mainly grocery stores.

[–] wildcherry -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Exactly, it's a victimless crime.

[–] punkisundead 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think being a bystander or a threatened party in a robbery can actually be traumatizing. I wouldnt call it a victimless crime because of that.

[–] wildcherry 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Won't somebody think of those poor corporations getting robbed /s

EDIT: All right, sorry for the sarcasm my friend. I tend to think a victim of state oppression's action to survive falls directly on state oppression. It's not like they were doing it for any other reason but to avoid jail.

[–] MrMakabar 4 points 8 months ago

Seriously so far she only got charged with the armed robberies. Nearly everybody else she worked with got caught or is dead. So without the armed robberies in Germany, she probably would be fine.

The isane part is that she had an Italian passport and did went on vacation with it. Also there was for a long time no international arrest warrent. So she had some really good options.

[–] punkisundead 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I do not blame them for doing it and I am not able to provide any meaningful alternative

[–] wildcherry 4 points 8 months ago

I read about this a bit and there's more under it. Apparently, she got recognized by some private person (NOT the government) using some facial recognition website. It's actually fucking chilling.

People who commit robbery do feel bad about it afterwards due to the negative effects on the other people involved, for example: https://youtu.be/NhuYiozj2Eg?si=P0dw5AUxyHEMMTv_&t=846

[–] nicerdicer2@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

An interesting Article, why journalists - not police - found her whereabouts:
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/daniela-klette-verhaftung-gesichtserkennung-pimeyes-100.html

Some parts translated into Englisch below:
Journalists had already tracked down the ex-terrorist, who had been in hiding for 30 years, in Berlin last year. In the rbb podcast "Most Wanted: Where is RAF terrorist Daniela Klette?", Khesrau Behroz and Patrick Stegemann report on how they followed up on a listener's tip and, together with an expert from the Bellingcat research platform, pursued concrete leads in Berlin.

The method: Michael Colborne from Bellingcat uploaded old mugshots of Klette to the site Pimeyes - an AI tool for facial recognition on the internet. Private photos apparently showing Klette appeared in the search results.

Klette had been in hiding for 30 years, but Corborne's search only lasted 30 minutes, according to his own statement. After their research, the two podcasters even visited the Berlin club where Klette had trained for a long time under the name "Claudia Ivone", says Khesrau Behroz in an interview with ZDFheute. They also discovered a Facebook account for Klette with the false name. However, the trail was lost in the club - Klette had not appeared for training for years, they said.

But if it was so easy for journalists to track down Daniela Klette in Berlin and even find out her cover name - why did the investigating authorities have no trace of the former RAF terrorist for so long? Couldn't target investigators have simply fed Pimeyes with the mugshots?

In principle, the use of such tools by the police is subject to strict data protection limits. Photos obtained in the course of investigations may not simply be passed on to third parties by the police at any time. When asked by ZDFheute, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) stated that the use of such facial recognition tools is only legally permissible in the context of a court-ordered public search. In Klette's case, however, this has been the case for decades.

It is unclear whether the podcasters' findings ultimately led to Klette's arrest. According to the police, the decisive tip-off came from the public last November.