Patrisse Cullors - Vogue "What We Want: Black Life Affirmed"

Vogue | June 4, 2020

“For the past seven years organizers, advocates, and families of victims of police terror have challenged and taken on law enforcement in all facets. We shut down highways and street intersections. We traveled around the world supporting global Black resistance. There isn’t a single place in the world that has been safe for Black life, and the primary purveyor of violence and terror has been law enforcement.

Communities from across the globe are demanding the immediate defunding of police and a reallocation of those dollars to building out an adequate public health care system. As Black folks are dying from COVID-19, city, county, state and federal budgets have prioritized the over-funding of law enforcement while defunding or underfunding critical social services.

Nationwide, the United States spends $100 billion a year on policing and an additional $80 billion on incarceration. As we witness the staggering numbers of COVID-19 patients in this country, as our public health care system is overwhelmed—it makes me wonder how else could we have invested these funds. We need to invest in an infrastructure that values people over profits. In Los Angeles, and in many parts of the world, we are witnessing a rise of houselessness—we should be investing in housing that is accessible across the board. There is growing need for an infrastructure that addresses the needs of people with mental health issues—let’s invest in an infrastructure that doesn’t incarcerate but actually treats people with mental illness with dignity and respect. Let’s invest in infrastructures that are sustainable and don’t plunder the earth or exploit the living organisms in it. And this is just the start. We have to defund the police because law enforcement should not be our first responders to everything. It is an impossible responsibility.”

Follow the link above to read the powerful Vogue article penned by Patrisse Cullors.

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