Thread by @YusufAQ

So apparently I’m on the front page of @reddit today. reddit.com/r/PublicFreako…

It’s easy for folks to try and discredit defund the police

People also don’t get that I’m not really advocating for residency, but making a point about how resources are extracted out of Black and Brown and poor communities

In Syracuse, schools are funded by property taxes. 95% of our police don’t live in the city. Our taxpayer dollars funds their communities.

Syracuse is one of the poorest cities in the country. It has the highest concentrated poverty among Blacks and Latinos nationally.

Nearly 50% of our properties are tax exempt.

Graduation rates hover around 50%, meaning half of our kids don’t graduate with a high school diploma

The overpolicing, the extraction of resources, the limited property tax revenue, the underfunded schools create an ecosystem akin to a tale of two cities

Suburbs around Syracuse have great schools, beautiful parks, great property values.

This means that kids in those communities have all of the benefits and promises of the American dream

Syracuse was impacted by redlining, urban renewal and the interstate highway system. These each interact to facilitate money to flow out of the city center, to the suburbs

We in Onondaga County have significant levels of segregation. 9th most segregated county nationwide, most segregated school borders in a county in NYS

The relationship between our depleted tax base and city employees - police - who are paid $100k a year, have pensions and health benefits for life, and the impact that has on Syracuse poverty is why we have to have a serious discussion about budgets

21% of our budget goes to policing, with 91% of that budget being focused on salaries and fringe benefits. Meanwhile, very little goes to neighborhood and business development, parks and recreation, and youth services

The very things we know increase quality of life and enhance public safety, get the least amount of funding. Meanwhile, we’re paying officers to help other communities get rich

And it’s more than that. Last week, the city settled hundreds of thousands of dollars in police excessive force lawsuits

Last year, the city had judgements for millions of dollars, two cases were $1 million each. In a city that is poor, that can barely provide essential services, We’re not only making suburbs rich, we’re paying for lawsuits for officer misconduct

It continues: for decades schools suspended students at such disproportionate rates, that NYS AG determined they were violating their civil rights and violated NY Constitution

This not only implicates the graduation rate, but helps to funnel Black and Brown youth into the school to prison pipeline

Budgets are limited and show what you value. They are moral documents. There is an ecosystem that keeps the cycle of poverty which continues to be used to justify more and more police.

Instead of counselors, crisis interventionists, mentors, employment programs, mental and public health services, etc. we choose police

To add to the absurdity: during COVID, we had to make draconian cuts to budgets except...you guessed it, the police budget

And it’s not just that we didn’t cut the police budget, we also had hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime..when we were all on lockdown mind you. Unjustifiably.

We do not prioritize what we know are the best practices

We fund systems that criminalize Black and Brown and poor folks; incarcerate them; deny them education; and reallocate resources out of their communities. All while making sure white, suburban communities have everything they need to thrive

Defunding the police is about refunding communities of color the money that is extracted from them. Not just the systemic racism they endure and terrorism they experience by officers who are not held accountable for misconduct

Defunding the police is about recognizing that police budgets are over inflated; that it is to highly prioritized; and that communities deserve more

Defunding the police is about making sure we reduce the size, scope and power of law enforcement because they’re too entrenched in our lives, especially when you’re Black and Brown

Defunding the police is about making sure Black and Brown communities have the resources they need to thrive

If I told you to close your eyes...I mean it, close your eyes...and imagine what a safe, thriving community looks like, what would you see?

Kids laughing. Grandma in a rocking chair. Football, and soccer, double dutch, and laughter. Flowers and trees.

I guarantee you that you wouldn’t see someone being patted down; thrown up against a wall; handcuffed and taken in a patrol car; sirens blaring. That’s not what we see when we imagine safety, security

Yet somehow, that’s all the imagination of politicians and elected officials when they sell us fear

It is last due the time for us to go bolder and be more transformative than we have allowed ourselves to be because what we have isn’t working

You cannot reform your way out of this. You cannot reform this no more than we could’ve reformed slavery because the two went hand in hand.

Policing as an institution, emerged out of the maintenance of white supremacy. You cannot extricate that from the reality we experience today. They are intimately tied.

From slave patrols, to the maintenance of Jim Crow, to COINTELPRO, to stopping protest, to mass incarceration, to Breonna Taylor and George Floyd: the institution is doing what it was designed and intended to do

And I don’t want people to think I’m suggesting police are evil people. I’m not referring to individual actors, but the system with which the institution operates. It’s not about good or bad apples, but the tree itself.

We have to reckon with knowing that it is not about being politically correct or culturally accepted: abolition of slavery took hundreds of years of struggle including a civil war. It wasn’t popular then and apparently still not today

But we shouldn’t stop dreaming and demanding a better future because we deserve to truly be free

I don’t say this lightly. I lost my brother to gun violence. He was killed in a drive by shooting in NYC at the height of gun violence. I get what it’s like to lose someone you love

What we don’t interrogate though is what is wrong with society that it would create individuals who want to inflict harm on each other in the ways that we observe?

Why did my brother’s killer feel killing him was more acceptable than preserving his life? There is something about how we’ve designed society and designed people out of redemption, success, opportunity, that facilitated for these realities

It is not easy to accept this, and it is hella complex, but I’m convinced that throwing people under the jail won’t bring my brother back or stop someone else from inflicting harm on others? In fact, in a twisted way, I can become a rite of passage

What if we funded communities properly, provided basic essential services, made sure mental and physical health was secured, ensured basic incomes, security of food? What if people had all the things they needed to thrive? Can you imagine?

So yes: defund the police has been made controversial but it wouldn’t have mattered what anyone would’ve called it. It could’ve been called reinvesting in communities, or budgets for life, or anything else and the effect would’ve been the same

It doesn’t matter what you call it, the fundamental premise is the same. They reject the idea because they want to maintain the status quo. Would a rose by any other name not still be a rose?

Point: make the damn policy happen. Call it what you want, but if ur not about true liberation, then I’d respect it if you said you’re ok with 21% of our budget going to fund for other communities to benefit, an untold amount to go to lawsuits, and state sanctioned violence

The facts are that our system is broken & decades of reform hasn’t changed that! You can’t train that away when it is endemic to the mindset - the warrior cop w/ the language, tech, tactics, weaponry of war - that allows police to occupy Black and Brown communities like war zones

Here’s an article colleagues and I wrote from the @NYCLU on this topic. nyclu.org/en/news/what-c…