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(thread) Proud Boys are an interstate white supremacist gang getting more brazen & violent by the day. Police often refuse to take them seriously, & frequently show them support both tacit & overt. It's an object lesson in the racism & brokenness of gang policing in the US.https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1147930592572522497 …
Some background: "gang" terminology in modern US policing has always at its heart been rhetoric used to justify law enforcement policy that specifically and violently targets black and Latinx youth and undermines their constitutional right to freedom of association.
Take gang injunctions, for example. You don't have to be convicted of a crime to receive one, but you can go to jail for violating one. For folks coming out of communities pathologized as gang-friendly, these orders are effectively orders of isolation and house arrest.pic.twitter.com/mMMIEIr5wR
Gang rhetoric is used almost exclusively in defense of policing tactics that subject lower income black and brown communities to violence, harassment, and terroristic law enforcement campaigns. It's used to criminalize everything from beer to basketball shorts.pic.twitter.com/AGf3Jop0bN
Once you're identified as a gang affiliate, you're swept up unappealably into databases that guarrantee a lifetime of harassment and discrimination. It doesn't matter if you committed a crime. You could have just gone to church with the "wrong" people.https://twitter.com/nyclawgrrrl/status/1147543519978037249?s=19 …
These "gang" databases are vast, permanent, secret, unappealable, error-riddled, and include folks as young as 13.pic.twitter.com/QpRW7RTquC
They're also life-ruining.
Your name in these databases can mean years added on to a simple marijuana possession sentence.
It can mean deportation or violent, militarized arrest at any time.
And as #blacklivesmatter
has taught us, arrests (esp by panicky cops) can be deadly.pic.twitter.com/xRuKiUsfFz
Database proponents will tell you that these McCarthyist lists and the computerized sentencing algorithms based on them are colorblind, a claim that white supremacist gangs frequently prove to be absolute nonsense.https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/how-the-portland-polices-racist-gang-database-missed-white-supremacist-jeremy-christian.html …
The Proud Boys are a case study in this selective enforcement. Here's the federal definition of a gang; let's walk through it step by step.pic.twitter.com/aWs0IbFTSF
The first federal gang checkbox: being an association of more than 3 individuals. The Philly Proud Boys chapter alone boasts 20 members and a long list of known associates. That's just one chapter of dozens across the country.pic.twitter.com/S8seM3aT3k
The second federal gang identification checkbox: collective identity used to create an atmosphere of intimidation. Check. https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1146160387852779521?s=19 …pic.twitter.com/8w1TdpfCfQ
Common name? Check.
Slogan? "Uhuru." "Proud of Your Boy."
Identifying sign, like a tattoo or physical marking? Third-degree Proud Boy membership requires a visible PB tattoo.
Style of clothing? Hey there, Fred Perry polo.
Hand sign? meet the "white power" 
.pic.twitter.com/auRGU4mHau
Graffiti? Banksy they ain't, but they do love to leave their mark by sticker-vandalizing the homes and neighborhoods of their enemies, including researchers like me. https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1145525515933093888?s=19 …pic.twitter.com/ulHB7ofsIH
Criminal activity? Violence? Intimidation? Check, check, and check.pic.twitter.com/VyEDklvKbL
And total, violent extermination of political opposition sure sounds like a "criminal objective" to me.pic.twitter.com/LFlmXZV3Ew
How about the characteristics the feds claim a gang is likely to possess?pic.twitter.com/x5a6X7Y5a0
Rules for joining? The Poud Boys have a baroque system for membership, with third degree membership involving getting jumping in a with a beating fourth degree membership requiring a Proud Boy to violently attack a political opponent.https://youtu.be/Kv6CfEIK6kQ
Do the Proud Boys meet regularly? Yes-- for drinks, for rallies, for making threatening house calls. Do they provide physical protection of their membership? Yes, with weapons, and enthusiastically so.pic.twitter.com/BmAcPpm4m6
Do they seek to exercise control over a geographic area and defend their interests against rivals? In Philly they make armored, near-midnight home visits to researchers that expose them, threatening us and working to violently intimidate us into silence.https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1146160387852779521?s=19 …
Tbe Proud Boys check every box on the federal gang identification list, and then some. So why is it that the Proud Boys get treated with kid gloves by law enforcement, while black 13 year-olds can be effectively labeled domestic terrorists for life for wearing basketball shorts?
Why is it that a Proud Boy can show up to an airport in gang attire, admit their gang affiliation to security, get caught trying to bring live ammunition onto an aircraft, and end up sent on their way by a friendly ex-marine with nary a citation?https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1147940809066631171?s=19 …
How does that happen in the airport of our nation's capital even after the same Proud Boy made terroristic threats against researchers online and showed off his weaponry on his way to a gang event? How do we end up with police providing escort to and fistbumping gang members?pic.twitter.com/jXSPi1OVVI
Can you imagine the outcry if the police pulled this kind of shit with Crips out in their gang colors?https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1146923009111990272?s=19 …
How does this happen? The answer is simple: white supremacy.
If gang policing were actually about policing violent gangs, the Feds would be rounding up Proud Boys right now. It's about practicing unconstitutional, violent social control of communities of color, especially low-income black and Latinx comminities, with impunity.
Gang policing doesn't catch white supremacist gangs because gang policing (in fact, pretty much all policing in the US) is white supremacist. If you're in a white supremacist gang, you're unlikely to catch heat unless your fellow nazis are causing guards trouble on the inside.
It doesn't help that law enforcement has more or less ignored its own researchers' warnings about active infiltration of the police by white supremacist gangs.pic.twitter.com/xWhCh9KSqd
Whatever you think of individual cops, the overarching structure of law enforcement itself is constitutionally incapable of policing white supremacists. Modern law enforcement has its roots in slave patrols and strikebreaking. It is set up to enforce racism, not defeat it.
White supremacy. That's why Proud Boys are getting away with pretty much everything short of murder, while black grad students can get swept up in gang busts because they attended the same church as a gangbanger at some point in the 7th grade. Period. (/thread)
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