Three Steps Toward Police Abolition - The New Press

But shouldn't we attempt to reform the system to better serve us now, while continuing our pursuit of abolition as a long-term goal? This commonly asked question came up on The Takeaway's episode Deep Dive: Police Abolition, on which Andrea J. Ritchie was featured as an "abolitionist teacher." Other guests argued for the importance of shoring up the police force with further training and better pay as a final or interim solution. But these solutions, and in fact the question itself, convey an inability to imagine a world without police. Taking to Twitter to respond to other guests, Ritchie states that "the bridge to the future we want lies in where we invest resources now, not in continuing to shackle our imaginations to the violence of policing or the failed idea that we can somehow contain it." She and Kaba argue in "Why We Don't Say 'Reform the Police,'" an excerpt published in The Nation, that policing in the United States, with its violent and racist origins, is unreformable. From the 1994 Crime Bill to Obama's 2014 Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the funds that poured into reforming the police have historically had extremely limited impact on policing. The issue is not a lack of resources, it is assuming that an antiquated system built to oppress a portion of the population is of use. 

Create Attitudes of Abundance

Ritchie and Kaba call instead for the reallocation of resources into a modern form of the commons, to be used for "collective sustenance and celebration." "Reimagining the commons" allows individuals to use their definitions of safety as guidelines when reinvesting resources to best suit their community, as Ritchie and Kaba expand upon in an excerpt in Truthout. The authors invite us to envision "de-commodified access to things that make life worth living," from universal health care to access to arts and cultural events. While the current system polices who deserves access to such resources, Ritchie and Kaba argue that shifting to a perception of abundance rather than one of exclusion will enable communities to thrive. Realizing the ideal of the self-governed community is only possible when you trust the people to determine the best use of resources for themselves through the experimentation and implementation of individualized safety measures.

 

While the media and bandwagon politicians may have moved on from "defund the police"—in no small part aided by the "copaganda" Kaba and Ritchie describe in their Guardian interview—No More Police outlines a pathway back to and beyond this slogan. It is simultaneously a call to action and to compassion, and a road map on how to get there. As the United States continues to be a leader in law enforcement violence, with incidents of police brutality making national headlines multiple times a week, No More Police and its accompanying Reading and Discussion Guide show activists how to turn what conservatives and liberals alike consider an impossibility into our reality.

Three Steps Toward Police Abolition - The New Press