Ceará committee for the demilitarization of police and politics

Promote actions that communicate the demands of different social subjects who live in areas where militarism is lethal and violates rights, with attention and focus to those people considered as “unworthy of life” by the state’s security policy: young, Black and poor in the outskirts of big cities. Promote the role of young people who are directly or indirectly victims of the public safety militarization that promotes wars, military incursions and overt surveillance in areas where potential internal enemies (as they understand it) could be hiding. In these places, the presumption of innocence becomes presumption of guilt. The actions will follow the perspective of central demilitarization of public security in order to strengthen and promote collective experiences of social movements concerning this reality and are intended to address the resurgence of criminal state at the expense of a social state that guarantees rights.

Sequence of monthly workshops.

Decentralized workshops debating demilitarization and public security in many communities, neighborhoods and squares.

Seminar “Who is the Police working for?” Security demilitarization in face of the slaughter of Black and poor youth”/ I National Meeting of Committees for the demilitarization of the police and politics.

Dossier “Public security is not war. Citizens are not the enemy”.

Development and systematization of print booklet.

Seminar to launch the dossier

Public hearing.

Reprinting of the “Handbook for the Demilitarization of the police and policies.

Speak with other partner youth movements about getting a space on the Committees for the Demilitarization internet site.

In partnership with the Front Against the Reduction of Legal Age, creating a campaign which goal is to restrict the airing of sensationalist shows on TV.

Cultural events.

According to Amnesty International’s report, homicides due to police intervention between 2010 and 2013, reached 1,275 deaths only in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Of this total, 79% of the victims were Black and 75% were between 15-29 years old. The Brazilian Forum on Public Security (2015) reveals that one person is killed by police every three hours in Brazil, resulting in 3,009 victims only in 2014 (an increase of 37.2% over the previous year). Far from being a local problem, the lethal violence of security forces is configured as a state policy that is supported by broad segments of population. Blaming police officers for the abusive use of force and lethal weapons, therefore, will not solve the problem that has been characterized as criminalization and extermination of Black youth and of people living in the outskirts of big cities. The issue revolves around the prohibitionist policies on drugs, the commodification of police-violence in sensationalist TV shows, the violence within police training, the growth of the so called “bullet group” (pro-gun congressmen), the upsurge of police and legal measures to deal with the consequences of inequality and social conflict, the lack of external control of public security organs, etc. In Fortaleza, a Brazilian capital with the highest teenage murder rate according to the Lethal Violence Reduction against Adolescents and Youth Program, we have seen an increase in this misguided logic of criminal policy. The problem culminated in the largest slaughter of its history, with 11 people killed in November 2015, and the possibility of expansion of militarism and occupation of territories, including the demand for the use of firearms by the Municipal Guard.

The Ceará Committee for the Demilitarization of Police and Politics is a diverse group of social activists inserted in different contexts of human rights violations, including young residents of the outskirts of Fortaleza, municipal guards and police officers who oppose the militarization of their corporation and this “enemy logic”. They keep close relations with neighborhood groups and social movements including the Ceará Front against the Reduction of Legal Age, indigenous peoples, the Marijuana March and Caravana da Periferia.

Front Against the Reduction of Legal Age
National joint committees for the Demilitarization of the police and politics.
APARELHO – Cultural and political space (occupied by various art groups and politicians).