Invest in Basic Rights, Freedom, and Real Safety

This is what "Defund the Police" chants are about.

A new world – a world of solidarity, where we take care of people's basic needs and fund education, housing, and health over funding police departments – is within reach. Why wouldn't we all want this? After all, funding education, housing, and health is what will create true safety for all parties involved in this game we call life.

From the U.S. to Canada, and all around the world, it's clear that the problem is people's greed and desire to be in power and to protect money over protecting people. People are demanding a halt to this, and so they chant "Defund the Police". Indeed, not all police officers are negligent, cruel, complicit (the list goes on for what "bad" may or may not mean), but unfortunately, the important thing to remember is that while not all officers are a threat to human life, they all do uphold a system that is killing people – a system that is exploiting people for profit. That's the motive behind mass incarceration anyway. And, this is the same system that's exploiting nature for profit, too. The police, as an institution, enforces the rules of a system that protects financial entities over human beings. Admittedly, the chant sounds extreme. Dissolving the police force in its entirety will not happen overnight because life is a process. But, like all the band-aid reforms which we've implemented thus far in police departments across the nation, quick fixes will not resolve the systemic issues at stake here. So this chant foreshadows a reinvented world for the long-run.

And while the chant Defund the Police sounds extreme, is it so outrageous to stand for a chant that carries so much meaning and solutions to the problems that are eroding our society? Our planet? Is it outrageous to stand for our homeless neighbor who is malnourished and vulnerable to COVID-19 as we speak? Is it outrageous to stand for our brothers and sisters currently in prison with inhumane sentences for having carried weed in their pockets or jumping over the subway turnstile because they lack the mentorship to keep them in an educational path? Is it outrageous to stand for the incarcerated people who represent dollar signs to the prison industrial complex? In other words, is it outrageous to demand that we replace over-policing with basic human rights, mass incarceration with justice, and greed with freedom?

Decades of greed, combined with the fear of the "other", of the unknown, are now being displayed as protests, with people angrily demanding change. But actually, behind the anger, people demanding change are deeply sad because we know that a new paradigm is not impossible. We know that a new world is within our reach. We know that we can take money out of politics and we know that it is possible to replace corruption with solidarity; solidarity for each other, and for our planet.

Is it outrageous to demand that we replace over-policing with basic human rights, mass incarceration with justice, and greed with freedom?

So, in this movement – which is not just a two-week moment – we get to remain active and supportive. To move forward in unity to accomplish what is possible we get to open our hearts to what the people are really saying before deciding to turn our backs on a seemingly-extreme chant. We get to welcome uncomfortable conversations and we get to feel through the discomfort of realizing that reimagined communities are very well possible. In this movement, we get to become proactive leaders in our friendships, families, neighborhoods, cities, and states. We get to embody action everywhere we go and we get to advocate for what is just. And we get to support a movement that is doing just that. As Bryan Stevenson says, the opposite of poverty is not wealth, it is justice. So, let's take a stand for justice and chant the chant...

Stay in possibility. Stay present to the movement. Stay active in your leadership. xx Sulafa.