Baltimore

The near-complete economic abandonment of urban America since the U.S. unconditionally surrendered in "the War on Poverty"...The labeling of every social program as "welfare" (and the racialization of that word) -- the criminal justice system didn't do these things. The cops, courts and prisons were given the job of controlling & containing what the other elements of the system refused to deal with.

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Problem with focusing solely on police violence (like: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-brutality-of-police-culture-in-baltimore/391158/ …) is it glides over the economic violence that conditions it. Libertarian [...] focus on cops is understandable, and it is what #BlackLivesMatter is proximately about, but the cops did not destroy the black industrial working class, or finance the slumlords, or redline poor neighborhoods.

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