A World Where Everyone's Needs Are Met

The police murder of Tyre Nichols is another clear indication that “reforms” aren’t working. We’ll cut violence and crime in America when we create a society where everyone has access to affordable housing, universal healthcare, a guaranteed minimum income, free education, clean water and nutritious food. A world where Dr. King’s dream becomes a reality will not have a modern police force. This is why I am a police-and-prison abolitionist – and not a police-and-prison preservationist. When I dare to imagine a world where everyone’s needs are met, a crucial part of that equation is the defunding of police and prison budgets. 

Unfortunately, police-and-prison abolitionism is not a socially respectable politics for most white folks and middle-class people – the Americans who believe the lie that police and prisons protect and serve everyone the same. But hear me out. What most white folks and middle-class people believe about police and prison abolition in 2023 is precisely what most white folks and middle-class people believed about the abolitionism of slavery in 1823 and the abolitionism of Jim Crow in 1923. They thought it was unrealistic then too. Things are changing though. I can feel it. Because the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.