Defund the police

Police Attack Occupy City Hall As Budget Vote Nears

New York City - Early this morning, New York Police officers swarmed the hundreds of people who have been peacefully occupying the park in front of City Hall for the past week and calling for a $1 billion cut to the NYPD budget. The city council is expected to vote on the budget today. Police pushed people onto the sidewalk, beat people with batons and made arrests. People report a person with a broken arm from being beaten with a baton and another with a broken ankle from being pushed between barricades. People are still in the park despite the attack by police as they wait for the city council to vote. They are calling for a "No" vote because it does not meet their demands.

Chicago’s Neighborhoods Will Remain “Occupied” Until The City Defunds CPD

June 26, 2020 BobVanecko, Southside Weekly. Educate! Chicago, Defund the police, Militarization, Police

The book Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power, published last year, details the history of the Chicago Police Department’s quasi-military occupation of the city’s Black communities from the race riots of 1919 through the present day. Author Simon Balto, an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Iowa, demonstrates that “there is not a time in Chicago’s history where the city was home to large percentages of black people, and in which they had a smoothly functioning relationship with the CPD.” While most histories of mass incarceration start around the “War on Drugs” or “War on Crime” eras, Balto shows that those years’ massive investments towards expanding and militarizing America’s police forces had such devastating effects precisely because the police had already gained decades of experience working as the hired enemies of Black people, in the words of James Baldwin.

What Elinor Ostrom’s Work Tells Us About Defunding The Police

June 24, 2020 Aaron Vansintjan, Shareable. Create! Abolish Police, Defund the police, Police, Racial disparities

In the past weeks, I’ve watched the news about the explosion of protests against police brutality and racism in the United States and around the world, and the resulting conversations on police defunding, reform or abolition. As I scrolled through social media and obsessively scanned and rescanned the headlines, a small thought tugged at me. It was the story of how one of my heroes, Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009, had arrived at the research that made her famous. Ostrom has become celebrated as the person who introduced the world to “the commons” — that is, how people can, and do, manage the resources in their community through participation and sharing, instead of violence and competition. Her work was revolutionary and has changed the fields of economics, planning, public policy and environmental science.

Occupation Of New York City Hall To Defund The Police

June 24, 2020 Change the NYPD. Resist! Defund the police, New York City (NYC), Occupy City Hall, Police violence

New York City - More than 170 local & national organizations, brought together by Communities United for Police Reform (CPR), released a follow-up to their April letter calling on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson to cut at least $1 billion directly from the NYPD expense budget by the June 30th deadline and redirect resources for FY21 to core social programs that are essential for Black, Latinx and other communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the letter released today, CPR and the #NYCBudgetJustice coalition make it clear that the call “to cut at least $1 billion directly from the NYPD FY21 expense budget is the floor, not the ceiling.” The demands of the group echo those laid out in the policy report on #NYCBudgetJustice released by CPR last week.

Policing Is Irrelevant For Public Safety

June 20, 2020 Justin Podur, Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Create! Defund the police, Murder, Police, Police violence

Recent protests, catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, call for an end to racist police violence. With their actions, the protesters have also moved beyond many of the stale policing debates of the recent past. Defund, disband, abolish—people who would never have even heard these words in discussions about the police are now seriously considering them. The breakthroughs in the police debate would not have been possible without the protesters, who have remained steadfast despite being beaten and abused by police everywhere in the United States. But this is not about making a breakthrough in the debate. This is about life and death. To stop police from killing people, 1,000 a year, year after year, changes will have to be made to the system. The protesters will be vindicated only if the changes made are the right ones.

Why And How To Defund The Police

June 20, 2020 Jason Kirkpatrick, Counterpunch. Create! Defund the police, Drug War, Mass Incarceration, Police violence

The vague and easily misinterpreted call to Defund the Police has been spreading quickly across the USA. Some may have a knee-jerk reaction to “just say no” to this call, but polls show a vast majority of Americans are concerned about improving the lives of people of color across the country. Reforms such as teaching police to de-escalate conflicts and enforcement of body camera use have support of about 90% of Americans. So, what could solutions to the current situation look like, how could they be paid for, and should relative costs realistically be coming out of police budgets? My experience sharing oversight of a police budget as a City Councillor and Vice Mayor for four years gave me valuable insights to be able to propose concrete solutions.

Scheer Intelligence: The Powerful Past, Present And Future Of Black Lives Matter

June 19, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Post. Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Defund the police, Podcast, Police violence

Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 after the murder of Trayvon Martin highlighted the dangers Black children, women and men face daily because of the color of their skin. The grassroots movement has protested against police violence and anti-black racism since then, and advocated for policy changes to address racial injustices. Despite having been active for the better part of a decade now, Black Lives Matter was recently launched into the global spotlight after the police assassination of George Floyd rocked the world. On this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” Dr. Melina Abdullah, one of the Black Lives Matter co-founders, tells host Robert Scheer how while BLM had worked hard to raise awareness about the slayings of everyone from Sandra Bland to Eric Garner, the activists did not expect the response to Floyd’s death to be so far-reaching.

Community Control Of The Police – And A Whole Lot More

June 18, 2020 Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report. Create! Community control of police, Defund the police, Democrats, Police violence

The wave of people’s protests across the nation, backed by solidarity actions in cities around the world, has caused the corporate oligarchy and its servants to make promises they can’t keep and give lip service to programs they have always resisted. The Congressional Black Caucus, the vast bulk of whose members backed militarization of local police and elevation of cops to the status of “protected” class, now claims to favor limits on police arsenals, less legal immunities for cops and a grab-bag of other reforms they previously dismissed out of hand. Mayors that know damn well they will have to cut spending across the board due to catastrophic loss of tax revenues during the current, Covid-induced Great Depression, now profess that they plan to withhold funds from cops in deference to the “defund the police” movement.

Activists Paint ‘Defund Police’ In Front Of Baltimore City Hall

June 17, 2020 Jaisal Noor, The Real News. Resistance Report Baltimore, Defund the police, Police Abolition, Police violence

Jaisal Noor: On June 12th, activists painted ‘defund police’ in front of Baltimore City Hall, head of a committee hearing on the Baltimore Police Departments proposed a $509 million budget. Speaker 1: The City Council is voting on a $509 million investment into police at the expense of resources that are necessary to communities. And so we want the Baltimore City Police Department to cut the police budget by $270 million and take that money and invest it in community-based solutions. Speaker 3: The process to abolition is actually a process that’s not going to happen overnight. I know that removing the police in their footprint in our city and redefining public safety is going to be a long process.

The Uprising Is Only Beginning: Building Power To Win Our Demands

June 14, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. Newsletter Abolish Police, Capitalism, Community control of police, Defund the police, Inequality, Police violence, Racism, Rebellion2020

The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands. The confluence of crises including recent police violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic collapse along with the ongoing crises of lack of healthcare, poverty, inequality, homelessness, personal debt, and climate plus awareness of mirage democracy in the United States have created a historic moment full of possibilities. If we continue to organize and build power, the potential for dramatic change is great.

Community Control Vs. Defunding The Police

June 11, 2020 Max Rameau and Netfa Freeman, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Class war, Defund the police, Police violence, White Supremacy

The intensity and scope of the mass rebellion that has gripped the U.S. and expanded internationally has shaken global white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to its knees. The people have tasted a real sense of their own power and as a result some very unexpected developments have emerged. Among them is the demand to “defund the police,” which is even being acknowledged by some lawmakers in a few jurisdictions. To be clear, this is a momentous development for the movement. Supporters often advance two primary arguments: the first is that defunding is a necessary step towards the ultimate goal of abolishing the police altogether.

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