OUR FUTURE NOW! PODCAST EPISODE # 11
Defund VS Abolish The Police is the title of the eleventh episode of Our Future: Now! A National Children’s Campaign Podcast. The show’s co-host Jonah Gottlieb and Natalie Mebane are joined by Cherrell Brown, who is a longtime black liberation activist.
To listen to the Podcast, you can go here. It can also be heard on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts and at the National Children’s Campaign and Parentology websites.
During the approximately 32 minute episode they discuss how racial justice is a key part of Brown’s work as a climate organizer at 350.org, and why she’s unapologetically in favor of abolishing the police as the only substantive way of transforming the broken system that has dictated how law enforement is used in America. The thought-provoking discussion will challenge many of the preconcieved notions that have dominated the political discourse around this issue. If you are interested in learning more about her fact-based perspective, you can get in touch with Brown on Twitter by going to @awkwardduck or emailing her at cherrellbrown13@gmail.com.
Below is a guide to key points in the podcast:
- At 1 minute 30 seconds: Browns talks about growing up in a small town in North Carolina that basically lost all their factory jobs 20 years ago and saw them replaced by jobs attached to a newly-built prison. She noticed how too many black people were subsequently being incarcerated. When she went to college at North Carolina A&T State University she started to organize around the issues of police accountability and environmental justice.
- At 2 minutes 55 seconds: Brown talks about being part of a student group organizing against the city council’s decision to reopen a landfill in a part of town where black people lived inorder to save money, as her first exposure to environmental racism. She also was part of a student group that organized against police brutality at the same time. She never untethered the two issues.
- At 3 minutes 55 seconds: Brown talks about taking things to the next level because of the uprising for social justice after the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. She was on the ground to witness the force that was used by the police department to push back against the protesters
- At 5 minutes 15 seconds: Brown talks about the irony of Chevron tweeting out “Black Lives Matter” the other day in the wake of the uprising for racial justice following the police murder of George Floyd, since the company is known for harming black and brown communities with their pollution. Chevron responded to the criticism by saying they foster diversity in the work place. That is a model many nonprofits also practice. She thinks the best way to make a real difference is by implementing policies that combat white supremacy, which has become so sustainable that it can be enacted and continued without white faces even being around.
- At 7 minutes 10 seconds: Mebane talks further about Brown’s point regarding the diversity shield that is used by companies and organizations to deflect attention away from their policies. The appearance of “wokeness”, so to speak is more surface level than substantive.
- At 8 minutes 50 seconds: Brown talks about how companies and organizations can work to end white supremacy by first looking at their mission statement to determine if it is problematic. In addition, listening to black leadership to understand what their needs are can help. For example, resources can be moves to help black grassroots organizations that are operating on a shoe-string budgets. Furthermore, when establishing relationship with black grassroots organizations they shouldn’t extract too much from them. Finally, when somebody takes bold steps to help, other groups will do the same.
- At 10 minutes 45 seconds: Gottlieb talks about how every aspect of the nonprofit advocacy world needs to make sure they are fighting for racial justice, whether you know it or not.
- At 11 minutes 35 seconds: Brown talks about how Black Live Matter was never explicitly or exclusively about the police. It is about every aspect of society that harms black people.
- At 12 minutes 40 seconds: Brown talks about how the phrase “defund the police” is part of an abolitionist framework. It means to reduce the scope and funding of the police to a point where society can think of different alternatives. She points out that getting to that point isn’t as dramatic as people think because there are already communities that have more resources for things like mental health and drug rehabilitation. It basically means getting at the root causes of why issues arise instead of leaning on the prison industrial complex to fix all the problems.
- At 14 minutes 35 seconds: Brown talks about her answer to those who says what happens to the murderers and rapist if you defund the police? She points to Atlanta, for instance, where they have had 30 murders this year, while police there have had 17,000 arrest for quality of life issues like panhandling and loitering. In the case of rape, statistics show that less than 24% are even reported to the police, less than 5% are ever adjudicated and less than 1% ever wind up with the rapist going to jail. So, clearly the police are not helping to address the very real problem of sexual violence in America.
- At 15 minutes 50 seconds: Brown talks about how police officers were recently shown all over social media engaging in overly aggressive behavior towards people, especially protesters. So the question is what does it mean to be a good police officer in an anti-black institution?
- At 16 minutes 35 seconds: Mebane talks about the Rashard Brooks murder in Atlanta, where somehow somebody who feel asleep in their car in McDonald’s drive-thru, who might have been intoxicated and was sleeping it off, wound up getting killed by the police as he was fleeing the scene.
- At 19 minutes 5 seconds: Brown talks about how in the Brooks tragedy what a defund the police scenario would have look like – call him a Uber and a tow truck. The problem of quality of life arrest is it a bad strategy that happens because you have so many homeless people. Address that challenge and suddenly half of those arrest become unnecessary.
- At 20 minutes 15 seconds: Gottlieb talks about how Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) says that places would look like the suburbs if you defund the police.
- At 20 minutes 55 seconds: Brown and Gottlieb talks about how the suburb concept is about communities with more resources and opportunities that don’t have huge expenditures for the police. If we have more economic fairness you would see fewer people resorting to criminal activity. Government expenditures can be used to help improve people’s lives.
- At 21 minutes 55 seconds: Brown talks about how the purpose of the police seems to be mainly about protecting property. The concept started in Europe when people were rebelling against the rulling class and then migrated to America with slave patrols in the South and in the North, where workers were rebelling against the elite. The police maintained control over those uprisings, which is something we see in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Peaceful protest took a violent turn when the police showed up.
- At 24 minutes 40 seconds: Brown talks about how you can’t really reform an institution like the police. That is why she believes in abolition. For example, there is a police reform campaign called “Eight Can’t Wait” by people like DeRay McKesson and Campaign Zero. It includes a proposal for police officers to intervene when they see another officer doing something wrong. That was already in place in Minneapolis, Minnesota when George Floyd was murdered by a police officers as other officers looked on. In Ohio there was a requirement for police to warn people before shooting, but in the case of the killing of 12-year old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a park, that never happened. The police drove up and shot him before he had a chance to do anything. A lot of reforms are in place, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
- At 25 minutes 55 seconds: Gottlieb talks about how in Chicago all of the “Eight Can’t Wait” reforms have been implemented and yet the problems of overly aggressive policing and responses to protesters continues.
- At 27 minutes 10 seconds: Brown talks about how the labor movement should reconsider their relationship with police unions, who have always been the protectors of bad police behavior.
- At 28 minutes 45 seconds: Brown talks about the type of things people can do to improve the current situation with the police. They can do simple things, for example, like when dealing with a noisy neighbor that they shouldn’t call the police on them, but look for other ways to resolve the problem. People can also learn about their local police budgeting to influence the decisions that their city council’s make. Also find a political home, which is place that does the type of work you feel called to do.