New York, like virtually all major US cities, has in essence two governments: the civilian bureaucracy overseen by the mayor, and the New York Police Department. As Stuart Schrader explains in his recently released Blue Power, police, through their unions, have “built a political movement that made cops untouchable,” able to “strong-arm local leaders and nullify attempts at public oversight.” And these police departments are reliable allies of the forces of urban capital, especially finance and real estate, which prefer them to the more democratically accountable parts of the state.
– Peter Frase, Zohran Mamdani and the Contradiction of Democratic Socialism
Police (and military) forces as a second government at the service of the capital that purchased them? Yeah, that tracks—and it makes me so fucking angry 🤬
