July 1 looms.

It’s the day SB 2343 becomes Mississippi law. Unless a court intervenes to block its implementation, the law will significantly expand the powers of the state-controlled Capitol Police force throughout Jackson, the state’s majority-Black capital city. A Republican supermajority has extended the force’s jurisdiction from the blocks of state buildings surrounding the Capitol to include most of Jackson. Public gatherings within the Capitol Complex Improvement District, including protests at the Capitol, will require an additional layer of written permissions secured in advance. Many in Jackson view the law as the latest expression of reactionary right-wing sentiments, and the state’s hostility toward the majority-Black city. 

That includes Kali Akuno, a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, who has called the Capitol Police force an “occupying army.” Cooperation Jackson is now in its tenth year of piloting cooperative economic projects in West Jackson, modeling a solidarity economy and alternatives to capitalist extraction. 

Read the interview on Facing South