"The police are the public and the public are the police” said cop-founder Robert Peel in 1829. What a noble sentiment! A delightful idea! “I know, we could get people to run themselves, it’d be great, all we have to do is split them into two groups and just make sure everyone knows they’re on the same side, brilliant, yeah” …and thus the modern police state is born.
- Nina Power; The Public, The Police and the Rediscovery of Hate!; STRIKE! Autumn 2013
The police are not the public and never have been. From rampant corruption to institutional racism and the riots, their entire barrel is rotten. Have the police ever had any moral authority – or merely the best weaponry?
Join us as we ask: what would it take to move towards a world without them?
“The violence has been largely pushed out of sight. But this is because we’re no longer able to imagine what a world based on social arrangements that did not require the continual threat of tasers and surveillance cameras would even look like.” (David Graeber)
Chair: David Graeber
Panel: Carole Duggan, Hannah Dee (Defend The Right to Protest), Fahim Alam and Richard Garside
#WeDoNotConsent
Part 1: David Graeber introduces We Do Not Consent! and our first speaker Hannah Dee, co-founder of Defend the Right to Protest.
Part 2: Featuring Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies
Part 3: Featuring Fahim Alam, the director of Riots Reframed, a feature-length documentary which reframes England's 2011 riots through voices of resistance.
Part 4: featuring the chair David Graeber, anthropologist and activist.