00:00Let me bring in Charlene, because this is your thing. You're part of the defund the police movement. So talk to me, what does that really entail? What does it mean for communities if police organizations were, in fact, defunded? And listen, I speak to a lot of people on my program every night. I'm on for at least two hours, and we're talking about this issue.
00:20And for many, including liberals, progressives, conservatives, defunding the police is a non-starter. They're like, no, we can reimagine, as Jenea said, but we don't want to defund the police. That is a non-starter. So talk to me about that.
00:37Well, what's interesting, Don, is that in the past several weeks, major progressive and liberal institutions like Planned Parenthood, Federation of America, SEIU, one of the largest labor unions in this country, scores, and I'm not even exaggerating, of progressive and leftist and liberal institutions have joined the movement for Black lives and calling for the defunding of policing and investment
01:06in Black communities. And so, these are major institutions that I personally would not have imagined to ever live on this thing, right? And it is, in so many ways, it's happening because of many of my comrades, and particularly Black women that I know who work within these institutions, who've been organizing them towards our issues for years.
01:31And so, in an electoral cycle, I think there's never a better time to actually fight for bold visions and bold policymaking. What we saw come out of Congress with the Justice in Policing proposed legislation was, at best, a display of a lack of imagination and also a lack of strong political will in the midst of national and even international calls
01:59for a vast transformation of power in this country, particularly the power that police hold in this country. And so, I don't think that it's an issue. Elections are supposed to polarize people.
02:11And I think that this presents an opportunity for Democrats and other people of other parties up and down the tickets to actually take a principled stance
02:23and saying, we are no longer going to lean into the old tropes of so-called being tough on crime. Those things did not work. We're not going to lean into the continued legacy of the 1994 crime bill. That did not work. That did not create safety. In fact, it just locked up a lot of people in our communities.
02:40And so, now is the perfect time for that work to happen in an electoral cycle and to give people some energy. And what's particularly important is that we are winning. There have been policy wins.
02:54In Minneapolis, there was a distinct policy win with the city council voting affirmatively to move forward with the disbanding of the Minneapolis Police Department.
03:06They also ended the Minneapolis Public School District ended their contract with the Minneapolis Police Department. We're seeing similar things happen in Denver, in Portland, and starting to happen in other places.
03:20Right now, here in Chicago, young people and students are calling for the $33 million that is currently going to be allocated to the Chicago Police Department to be reallocated into school-based services.
03:32And I want to make this really clear that we're not just simply talking about moving resources into more institutions that act as police by proxy.
03:41Because we know, and I'm a trained social worker. I have a master's in social work.
03:44There are many social work institutions that police our people. And so, we are, I'm not talking about reimagining policing.
03:53I'm talking about redoing and transforming how we deal with conflict, harm, and violence, up and down.
03:58As an abolitionist, I believe in the abolition of the prison industrial complex, and I work towards it, defunding the police is one part of a broader strategy
04:08in transforming how we deal with conflict, harm, and violence in this country, outside of punishment, or prisons, and policing.
04:15So, yeah, it's an overall.
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