Why Our Leadership Must Defund the Police and Redirect Funds Toward the Betterment of Our Communities
As we all process the grief of ongoing violence in our neighborhoods, it behooves us to pause, breathe, and reflect, so that we might focus our efforts and actions toward a more just society. It is easy to feel distracted by the lists of helpful resources and conflicting advice (not to mention blame) being passed around social media against the backdrop of chaos in the streets. Everyone is processing, we're coming from different places, and this shit is intense. As Bree Newsome Bass said recently, "The white establishment wants the conversation to center on everything EXCEPT the non-stop violence of its police forces."
While effective as an expression of discontent with the status quo, the action of civil disobedience is not itself a call to action. Do not be distracted.
The current call to action is clear: Our leadership must defund the police and redirect those funds toward the betterment of our communities. It's right there, on the Black Lives Matter website. It's also obvious to anyone who has been examining the effects of systemic racism on our cities and towns. Our job is to pressure our leaders to accomplish this goal immediately. Our job is to support one another as we continue this fight. Our job is to keep ourselves and our families healthy.
Though most everyone favors peaceful protests over destructive riots, do not be fooled. These riots are impossible to ignore. They are not "ineffective" or "violent" as cable news (and much of our leadership) would have us believe. They are not pulling focus and muddying the waters. The waters are already muddy AF. In fact, the actual violence inherent in our police forces is being highlighted. It's on full display for everyone to witness. It's shown plainly in the footage of unarmed, peaceful protestors standing up to the police and being shot at, kicked, and gassed for exercising their civil rights. It's in the reactions of these officers (or lack thereof) to the pain of the black and brown communities that they serve. Communities that find interactions with these powers unavoidable — due to the fact that we have criminalized plights such as homelessness and implemented the police in our schools. These events, pulling police forces and their reactions into the public view, means that the issue of police brutality is being illuminated like never before.
Furthermore, the actual violence of hunger and poverty, the violence of racism, the violence of state-supported murder, of mass incarceration, of no healthcare, of institutionalized misogyny, consumerism, and the destruction of the environment are issues that POC have had to grapple with on a disproportionate level forever and ever. Having been told by the majority of our leadership that we are powerless to curtail this violence, we have shouted into the void for decades without seeing adequate systemic change. But the shared witnessing of George Floyd's death, in a time where lives are already threatened daily by carelessness and ignorance, has (thank God) made it impossible for people to stay silent, and has inspired courage to act in many, many citizens.
“Though most everyone favors peaceful protests over destructive riots, do not be fooled. These riots are impossible to ignore.”
In the bizarre circumstances of recent months (and years) some truths have become glaring. Even with huge numbers of Americans remaining in their homes for weeks, police shootings in many communities have more or less maintained their numbers. And somehow, even after the events in Ferguson several years ago which inspired the Campaign Zero organization and its call to demilitarize the police, little has been done on a national level to acknowledge and correct our corrupt police system, a system that is far from keeping the peace but is armed to the teeth.
Many American cities have already responded to community pressures, successfully redirecting police funding toward initiatives like emergency services. Even so, more needs to be done, and faster.
It is imperative that this line of thinking becomes the new status quo for every American city. Our leadership must defund the police and redirect those funds toward the betterment of our communities.
That is the call, and it couldn't be louder. Let's listen up and end this madness.
Michelle Holder lives in New Haven with her husband, serving primarily as a caregiver and educator for her two young daughters. A writer and performer, she hails from Chicago, where she spent 6 years directing communications and events for a small but mighty social justice non-profit.