Evolving Folks Project

The United States is the “so-called” Land of the Free, but that’s just a fancy tagline. During the antebellum South, the modern-day police could trace their origins to the slave patrols. These patrols captured runaway slaves and returned them to their enslavers. Sometimes, these slave patrollers would kidnap free black people to sell them into slavery.

Slave patrols, a haunting reminder of the past, persisted in their work until the Civil War concluded and the 13th Amendment was ratified. The black community showed remarkable resilience during Reconstruction, as they dealt with militia-style groups that had replaced the slave patrols. These groups, empowered to deny access to equal rights, were confronted by freed slaves, their resolve as solid as the ground beneath their feet. Though the Black Codes were enforced relentlessly and systematically, the spirit of the formerly enslaved people refused to be extinguished.

In 1868, the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution marked a significant milestone in the fight for racial equality. This amendment technically granted equal protection to African Americans, putting an end to the oppressive Black Codes. However, this legal victory was short-lived, as Jim Crow laws and state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation replaced it.

In the 1900s, racial discrimination became even more deeply entrenched because of the formation of police departments in East Coast and Midwest cities. These police departments had the duty of enforcing local laws and also of upholding the segregationist Jim Crow laws. They could inflict extreme violence on black people who broke any Jim Crow law. This form of racial control remained in place until the late 1960s.

Thus, the police’s primary function is to preserve the capitalist structure. The United States has operated as a police state since its beginning. A police state is defined as a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens’ activities.

The damaging and far-reaching effects of biased policing are clear in the distrust and division it has caused. In the U.S., it has the largest prison population in the world, a sobering statistic. And on top of everything else, the highest rate of incarceration per person. As of May 2020, 655 out of every 100,000 people were incarcerated. Each year, U.S. taxpayers provide $81 billion to support prisons, parole, and probation programs.

I’ll provide three prime examples of how the United States is a police state.

COINTELPRO

The first development of COINTELPRO, which was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive.

During this era, the FBI spied and surveilled Civil Rights and Black Power activists like Dr. King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and the hippie movement. The acting FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, said that “the Black Panther Party was the single greatest threat to American democracy.” Apparently, undermining or destroying workers’ rights, making access to voting difficult, wealth inequality, and treating women and BIPOC in the 60s weren’t a threat to democracy. It was young black activists and community members coming together to feed little black babies food, and protect their communities from roaming police gangs that were the real threat to “freedom”.

Police and the Black Community

Speaking of police in the black community, ever since the slave patrols morphed into our modern-day police force. The black community has always been a target for law enforcement. Whether it is a black activist marching for freedom or just black people existing, the police have always targeted black communities. Police have always occupied black communities decade after decade. Over the centuries, to the present day, black folks have had to deal with the harsh reality of black brutality to outright state-sanctioned murder by the police.

From the local police working with the FBI to target black activists of the 60s and 70s under COINTELPRO. From the Rodney King beating in the early 1990s to the start of the Black Lives Matter era during the Obama presidency. Black Americans have always lived under the constant threat that the police ain’t black people’s friends, even if they share the same complexion as us. The war on drugs and further militarization of American society have turned beat cops into armed stormtroopers. State-of-the-art military-grade equipment and weapons are being given to police forces across the nation, funded by astronomical budgets. From cop cities to police tanks, the police in the United States seem ready for war. But with whom — it’s citizens. All to maintain the shitty status quo of the haves and have-nots.

I remember growing up, getting the talk from my parents about how to interact with the police and how not to make any sudden moves. Why? Because they could open fire and kill me. Why? All because of my melanated skin. Unfortunately, I’ve been a victim of police harassment and brutality in my life. Even if white people refuse to acknowledge or accept their privilege in the racial hierarchy of the United States. Most black people who aren’t wholly in the sunken place know that a routine traffic stop can be a matter of life or death, depending on the officer’s mood and bias. This is a reality when you’re driving while black.

ICE and the Patriot Act

Following the September 11 attacks, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 brought about ICE’s creation. It absorbed the prior functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the United States Customs Service. ICE’s structure includes two main law enforcement divisions — Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) — and three supporting divisions: Management and Program Administration, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

The Bush administration created ICE in the early 2000s. Within a quarter-century, ICE has evolved into one of the most politically charged federal enforcement agencies. ICE has become a highly politicized law enforcement federal agency. From Obama being called the deporter-in-chief, to the Biden-Harris Administration targeting Haitian migrants, to the Trump 2.0. era we’re currently living in. The current POTUS has turned ICE into his personal army and unleashed it upon the most vulnerable of communities. Unlike the shadowy FBI of bygone eras, ICE carries out its operations openly, instilling fear in citizens and disregarding human rights.

In modern-day America, armed masked men are taking men, women, and children off the streets in state-sanctioned kidnappings. The courts have legalized racial profiling once again, and we have to pretend all this shit is usual when we are living with a modern-day Gestapo. Even though it was the racial caste system and Jim Crow that inspired Nazi Germany and Hitler. Suppose armed government-approved thugs were targeting citizens in Russia or China. In that case, the United States government would threaten war and sanctions against those nations. But in the United States, this is what’s happening.

Western media outlets commonly condemn North Korea, depicting it as a totalitarian country with relentless monitoring and surveillance of its population. Yet, the United States has been keeping tabs on its own people. Passed with almost no debate, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a panicked Congress, only 45 days after the September 11, 2001, attacks. This law was a swift modification of the nation’s surveillance laws, broadening the government’s ability to spy on its citizens and diminishing the existing checks and balances. Whistleblower Edward Snowden is still living in political exile for exposing the mass surveillance of American citizens by the federal government. The Patriot Act was just a modern-day update to what Uncle Sam did to Civil Rights activists during the tumultuous 1960s.

The scary thing is how many citizens will gladly live under a police state as long as they can feel superior to their fellow citizens based on race, religion, gender, class, or sexual orientation.

The problem with police states is that even those with the most privilege will eventually become targets of those with real power and resources. As wealth inequality and poverty continue to rise in the Divided States of America, so will the policing. It will take countless brave citizens to stand up to the ruthless state that criminalizes poverty, race, and citizenship status. History has shown us how people have stood and fought back against totalitarian regimes and times. Black Americans had been living under slavery since the first slave ships from the African continent arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, back in 1619.

Sadly, now many of our fellow non-black citizens understand what that veil of policing feels like as both major political parties have emboldened and funded them. Our only chance of winning is resistance through working-class, international, and racial solidarity. I’m proud to see that legacy of resistance live on. As Malcolm X once said, “It’s liberty, or it’s death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.”