Police Abolition?

On The Path Toward Police Abolition

Understanding harm reduction, defunding, and other strategies to end police violence and redefine public safety

DeRay Mckesson

Jun 5 · 9 min read

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

This moment is too important for Black people — we cannot afford to lose. Viral videos of Black people being killed by the police have become a grim currency. It is easier to post a video clip of a dying Black person taking their last breath than to reckon with the reality that these killings will happen again and again until we collectively acknowledge that policing is not the source of public safety.

We must reduce the immediate power the police have to harm and kill us, while we simultaneously move money and resources from the institution of policing to the community-based groups that keep neighborhoods whole and far safer than policing ever has.

There are no doubts that the entire institution of policing is dangerous for Black people. That is why our #8CantWait campaign does not stand as a singular set of demands, or in contradiction to those we’ve been hearing in communities across the country to defund the police, but in conjunction. I owe it to you to make that abundantly clear./.../