The demonstrations, protests, and uprisings against police internationally, and the rise of the BLM movement, are inextricably connected to police violence and deaths in custody, and especially the deaths of Indigenous, Black, and people of colour. While there is a long history to policing as the violent arm of colonialism and slavery as discussed in Chapter 2, the more recent history of the struggle against police violence arises in the global revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The anti-imperialist struggles against the US war in Vietnam and opposition to its interventions and support for dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, the anti-apartheid movement, the civil rights movements, the rise of worker’s and student’s militancy, and the women’s rights and gay rights movements, brought a generation of people into direct contact with the ferocity of state power. Police in various countries were at the forefront of often violent repression of these popular movements. The other important lesson from the resistance to police violence is that the popular movements were not simply oppositional – they were concerned with responding to the needs of communities in areas such as access to health, education, legal services, and housing, and in building solidarity across groups.

Intertwining stories

Taking Australia and the US as examples, the struggle against police and state violence was central to the radical politics of the Black Panther and Indigenous liberation movements. The formation of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis, the Black Power movement and the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) in Sydney, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland are central examples of First Nations and Black movements for autonomy, self-defence, and self-determination which emerged alongside protecting local communities from police violence. Reflections on First Nations and Black history since the late 1960s bring to light parallels which bear directly on understanding the current BLM protests and the demands to defund the police. In short, the struggle against police violence and racism has been one of the defining features of modern First Nations and Black radical political movements in both Australia and the US, and it began at similar moments in both countries.