By Oscar Vargas: The petition to abolish the police until recently seemed impossible, but today it is being discussed thanks to popular pressure. The premises of this movement can be just as valid for all those territories that dare to dream of other ways of guaranteeing the safety of the people.
The murder of African-American George Floyd has made visible a debate that decades ago people and groups in the United States have held: the impossibility of reforming police brutality and, therefore, the need to end the police. These discussions have taken place several decades ago, reactivating recently after popular riots caused by successive murders of African-Americans. Trying to quench the anger, the State has constructed a discourse to review the performance of its servants, however, time passes and government intentions little change reality.
It is not surprising that it is precisely African Americans who have led these discussions and that the legacy of slavery in the northern country strongly defines current policy; Angela Davis has already argued that if the death penalty still exists in the 21st century, it is because of the naturalization of the murder of slaves who sought to liberate themselves centuries ago. Likewise, the abolitionist ideas come from the movement that sought to root out that condition of ownership of white men on blacks. That is why, among other things, it is that the descendants of the enslaved people recover the same notion of abolishing, because they already know that there are moments in humanity when you have to start again to respect life.
A good part of the current abolitionist movement justifies its ideas in that for years they have been given one after another commission of investigation with insufficient results to stop the murders caused by policemen; successively, it was determined to promote reeducation including anti-segregationist policies, include body cameras in procedures, encourage the entry of African-Americans to the units and integrate the police force with the communities. All of this was attempted years ago in Minneapolis, where Floyd was assassinated, and despite this, impunity remained. The murderous policemen know that in the courts they have few options to lose, and partly because their authority figure is backed by a majority opinion that justifies their need, in order to guarantee security; great sophism on which institutional violence is justified.
However, organizations such as the NIA project plan to stop using the police to confront insecurity, making it obsolete with other measures: transferring the resources lost in that armed corps, reinvesting them in health, education, housing, and in general social welfare. If this is done, there will be less and less need for the police and therefore in the long term it will be obsolete. But not only there is the bet; many argue the need to instead hire care workers who receive the wages now held by police assassins, so that they can not only intervene when necessary but prevent by identifying problems within communities.
As a result of this activism for years, in the protests of recent weeks, the motto “Defund the police” has become visible, which is precisely one of the abolitionist movement's proposals: to underfund the police. Part of this call comes from within the Black Lives Matter movement, who denounce that the increase in the budget to the police, the only thing that has guaranteed is more repression and murders by this armed body. Just to understand this, we must recognize how in the United States there are days when the police kill more people than in a year are killed by these bodies in other countries; for example, in the first 24 days of 2015 the police in that country killed more people than those killed by the police in England and Wales in 25 years.
The call for underfunding has also been made by other communities; The American Friends Service Committee, a religious organization that promotes non-violence in that country, led a petition that was joined by more than 5,000 people for this purpose. Its secretary general stated that: “This is not a political issue. This is not a budget question. This is a moral question ... the soul of our nation is deeply wounded, and this moment begs us to take bold action ... Our faith calls us to speak the truth to power and challenge guilty institutions until the lives of our sisters and brothers Blacks, browns, and Indians are equally valued. "
While hundreds of activists on the streets of Chicago, Seattle, Boston or New York continue to propose that the problem is not to transform the police but to end the idea of surveillance, and thus end the need for police, already in Minneapolis the council of the city made the decision to dismantle and abolish the police in the long term. It is not yet clear what are the steps they will take to follow this decision, but it is assured that they will look for a different security model and that this will be discussed with the community. Faced with this, President Trump tweeted: “Law and order, do not underfund or abolish the police. The radical left-wing Democrats have gone crazy. "
Time will tell if such a dismantling in Minneapolis becomes a reality; for now, it is enough to document that a petition that until a few decades ago seemed impossible is being discussed today thanks to popular pressure. The premises of this movement can be just as valid for those territories that dare to dream of other ways of guaranteeing security: disarm, dismantle, abolish ... show solidarity.
Originally published in the Argentine newspaper Virginia Bolten.
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