Programme
Policing the Crises: Austerity, Cops and Abolition
Black-E Studio
08.10.2023
12:30PM – 2PM
TWT23_014

The Public Order Act, the proliferation of Public Space Protection Orders and clampdowns on protest continue to extend police powers in Britain. With austerity in full swing and increasing securitisation of retail in reaction to crimes of survival, law and order rhetoric is as popular on the Labour front-bench as it is in Downing St. How does policing in Britain operate in this context? And what strategies are open to us as abolitionists to build towards a world without policing?

Speakers

Aviah Sarah Day is a Black community organiser with Sisters Uncut and Hackney Cop Watch. The rest of her time is spent lecturing in Criminology at Birkbeck, University of London, organising in her trade union branch, and reflecting on how to build workers' power through anarcho-syndicalism. She is co-author of Abolition Revolution, Pluto's latest intervention on race, class and policing in the UK.

Shanice Octavia McBean is a Black writer and activist in Sisters Uncut. She grew up in Handsworth, Birmingham, before moving to Tottenham. Describing herself as a revolutionary and Afro-Marxist, she has also organised in anti-racist groups and trade unions, and is co-author of Abolition Revolution, Pluto's latest intervention on race, class and policing in the UK.

Griff researches and campaigns on policing and criminal justice, including protest, surveillance and technology, and prisons, and organises against immigration detention and deportation. He is one of the recently acquitted Brook House 3.

Tom Fowler is a unreconstructed class war anarchist from South Wales. Part of an activist network that was targeted by undercover police in the 2000s, he now campaigns against infiltration of protest groups and reports on the undercover policing inquiry to attempt to understand and expose state methods of political repression. Host of the spycops info podcast.

Lolo (they/them) is an abolitionist activist ready to battle any middle class crank getting in the way of liberation. A bimbo anarchist studying law to unpick the system as juicy justice. Based in Manchester, ACAB always xoxo

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