Moving from the Streets to the People’s Houses

The demand to “Defund the Police” is organic and legitimate. It has risen to a national discussion and we must be super clear on what this means to local communities before the racist power structure decides for us. If we are to have meaningful, lasting reforms, the Black Lives Matter movement must lay specific proposals in front of their local and state houses now. We need disciplined and strategic organization to ensure change is in place.

The common denominator in the meaning of defunding the police is that there will be no more increases in police budgets, and that funds diverted from the sacred, bloated budgets will be invested in meeting human needs. The divested dollars would be pumped into community mental health services, housing programs, youth recreation, training and employment, childcare, parks, and education.

Several corporations like Nike, Target and the NFL gave their employees Juneteenth off as a paid holiday. We should see this as a payoff when most of them have less than stellar practices related to the hiring, retention and supporting of Black employees. It wasn’t that long ago that Roger Goodell and the NFL smacked down the righteous concerns of quarterback Colin Kaepernick regarding police violence against Black men and booted him out of the game (forever?). A sorry from Goodell’s sorry ass is empty until he makes substantive changes in his own racist organization.

Let’s not get the strategy twisted or let it get derailed. Confederate statutes or Aunt Jemina on the pancake box are symbols of white supremacy. Dealing with those symbolic reminders of oppression are important but they don’t change the real power dynamics in this country. If they changed Jemina’s name to Zuri and put her in African attire, police terrorism of Black communities would not stop. If Juneteenth was made a national holiday tomorrow, we would still have a huge racial income gap in this country.

There are many well-intentioned people who’ve flooded the streets of cities across the nation. They are showing up in support of Black lives but may not know where and how to turn their expressions of outrage into policies and legislation that will hold lawless institutions accountable. Some windows are closing on the opportunities to actualize demands not to mention the stalling tactics being used by local and state officials. Their plan is to just outwait the angry folks and it’ll be business as usual.

The demand from the streets to defund police departments has resounded across the country because we collectively came to the same realization. The budgets of police continue to balloon while social services and programs get cut. Defund the police means different things to different people, and the meaning falls along a wide spectrum from getting so-called School Resource Officers out of schools to ending hyper-surveillance programs.

Defunding the police will look different in each city and town. It will be based upon the local demands, the political landscape, and the organizing capacity of the community to follow through. This country gets selective amnesia when it comes to racism. That’s why there’s a memory gap on promises made six years ago when Michael Brown was murdered by a Ferguson cop. We must be vigilant and unapologetic.

Spoiler alert. As communities start scrutinizing the local police budgets, they will be met with a seemingly impenetrable wall. They may be surprised at what they might find—or what they can’t find. Sometimes these budgets have many layers and unions have been successful at keeping their complete budgets and bargaining contracts secret. Elected officials are hesitant to take this bull by the horns because of the strength of police unions, their ability to retaliate, and the expansive influence of their political donations. Do not be deterred. This wall must be cracked if there’s to be any progress on police accountability.

Finally, there are some principles which have emerged from police terrorism work that are helpful in keeping local efforts grounded. We should not support any reforms that consolidates state or corporate power. We should not support any policy or decision that harms Black lives. Our work should always be moving us towards a genuine re-alignment of political and economic power.

The BLM movement and its allies have proven we will go through COVID-19 to express our outrage over the continued racist murders of Black people at the hands of cops and their wanna-be enforcers. Now we must go through the blue wall to get what we need.