To ensure Black Lives Matter, we must scrap oppressive systems for equity-based ones

There are no words to ade­quate­ly describe the anger and grief that our team is feel­ing in the wake of the mur­der of George Floyd, whose death at the hands of a group of peo­ple who were sworn to pro­tect Min­neapo­lis fol­lowed the equal­ly hor­rif­ic mur­ders of Bre­on­na Tay­lor in Louisville and Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County.

As an orga­ni­za­tion, we have always been com­mit­ted to the val­ues of empa­thy and mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. We believe that Black Lives Mat­ter, and we have sup­port­ed that cause through­out our his­to­ry. In addi­tion to advo­cat­ing for social jus­tice here at home in the Pacif­ic North­west, NPI staff and board­mem­bers have marched to #TurnOn­The­Wa­ter in Detroit, to protest Joe Arpaio’s hor­ri­ble regime of cru­el­ty in Phoenix, to sup­port the efforts to reform polic­ing in St. Louis, and to denounce white suprema­cy and fas­cism in all their forms in Atlanta.

Today, we recom­mit our­selves to the work that we know must be done to stamp out racism and oppres­sion. Fury must be chan­neled into action. Grief and mourn­ing must be the pre­cur­sor to orga­niz­ing and mobi­liz­ing for change.

For if we do not dri­ve change — if we do not dis­man­tle the sys­tems that do not val­ue BIPOC lives — then this cycle will sim­ply repeat and the list of names that now includes George Floyd, Bre­on­na Tay­lor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Gar­ner, Michael Brown, Fred­die Gray, and San­dra Bland will grow even longer.

Struc­tur­al, sys­temic change may seem out of reach, but that does­n’t mean it is not attain­able. As the inter­na­tion­al civ­il rights icon Nel­son Man­dela once observed: “It always seems impos­si­ble until it is done.” 

He’s right. A dif­fi­cult task may be dif­fi­cult, but it’s not impossible.

We must come togeth­er in the after­math of these recent ter­ri­ble events to secure the change that we know we have long need­ed. We must rec­og­nize our com­mon human­i­ty and unite more peo­ple around our finest tra­di­tion­al val­ues, which have inspired gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans to pre­serve in pur­suit of a more per­fect union.

Jus­tice for Ahmaud Arbery, Bre­on­na Tay­lor, George Floyd, and oth­ers like them isn’t enough. We must replace the oppres­sive sys­tems that don’t val­ue Black lives or indige­nous lives or any oth­er lives besides white lives with sys­tems that are root­ed in equi­ty. It is these rigged sys­tems that per­pet­u­ate the vicious cycles of vio­lence that peo­ple of col­or have become accus­tomed to.

This coun­try’s recent efforts to build a net­work of mil­i­ta­rized police forces have result­ed in the cre­ation of one of the oppres­sive sys­tems that I’m talk­ing about. In his book Rise of the War­rior Cop, Radley Balko writes at length about the destruc­tive trends that have reshaped police depart­ments, noting:

If even the ear­li­est attempts at cen­tral­ized police forces would have alarmed the Founders, today’s polic­ing would have ter­ri­fied them. Today in Amer­i­ca SWAT teams vio­lent­ly smash into pri­vate homes more than one hun­dred times per day. The vast major­i­ty of these raids are to enforce laws against con­sen­su­al crimes.

In many cities, police depart­ments have giv­en up the tra­di­tion­al blue uni­forms for “bat­tle dress uni­forms” mod­eled after sol­dier attire. Police depart­ments across the coun­try now sport armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers designed for use on a bat­tle­field. Some have heli­copters, tanks, and Humvees. They car­ry mil­i­tary-grade weapons. Most of this equip­ment comes from the mil­i­tary itself.

Many SWAT teams today are trained by cur­rent and for­mer per­son­nel from spe­cial forces units like the Navy Seals or Army Rangers. Nation­al Guard heli­copters now rou­tine­ly swoop through rur­al areas in search of pot plants and, when they find some­thing, send gun-tot­ing troops dressed for bat­tle rap­pelling down to chop and con­fis­cate the con­tra­band. But it isn’t just drugs.

Aggres­sive, SWAT-style tac­tics are now used to raid neigh­bor­hood pok­er games, doc­tor’s offices, bars and restau­rants, and head shops, despite the fact that the tar­gets of these raids pose lit­tle threat to any­one. This sort of force was once reserved as the last option to defuse a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion. It’s increas­ing­ly used as the first option to appre­hend peo­ple who aren’t dan­ger­ous at all.

Balko wrote those words in 2013. Near­ly sev­en years lat­er, I recalled them when I heard about the deaths of Bre­on­na Tay­lor and George Floyd.

Both lost their lives at the hands of indi­vid­u­als who had tasked with uphold­ing the law, but end­ed up com­mit­ting mur­der instead. Those indi­vid­u­als had been rad­i­cal­ized by a bro­ken polic­ing sys­tem that encour­ages law enforce­ment per­son­nel to behave more like sol­diers than keep­ers of the peace.

The use of choke­holds, tear gas, rub­ber bul­lets, pep­per spray, and the like does not make our com­mu­ni­ties safer. More­over, police offi­cers are not made safer by wear­ing body armor, tot­ing mil­i­tary grade weapons, and dri­ving around in for­ti­fied vehi­cles to car­ry out their duties. Nev­er­the­less, espe­cial­ly since Sep­tem­ber 11th, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has doled out enor­mous sums of mon­ey to police depart­ments in an attempt to get them to militarize.

This mil­i­ta­riza­tion trend — com­bined with the latent racism sad­ly still present in many police forces — has been a dis­as­trous and dead­ly combination.

It is there­fore of vital impor­tance that we demil­i­ta­rize the police. This is not the only sys­temic change we need, but it is one of them, and it’s an impor­tant one.

Our soci­ety needs police, but we need all who choose a career in law enforce­ment to actu­al­ly serve as police and not as part of a pseu­do-mil­i­tary force.

How the law is upheld mat­ters. If offi­cers are trained like sol­diers are, we can expect them to behave like sol­diers, which is not what we want.

Demil­i­ta­riz­ing the police will entail chang­ing our laws… and our bud­gets… and our norms. It won’t be sim­ple or easy but it has to be done. If Black lives are to mat­ter, then we must do more than march and protest and hold vig­ils. We must change who rep­re­sents us and what deci­sions they make.

In the dif­fi­cult days ahead, we will pri­or­i­tize empow­er­ing those who want to do this work. At NPI, we make a dif­fer­ence through research-dri­ven advo­ca­cy; we believe that research yields data and insights that are need­ed for devel­op­ing win­ning strate­gies for elec­toral and leg­isla­tive success.

We are proud of our past research sup­port­ing the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty and De-Esca­late Wash­ing­ton’s Ini­tia­tive 940. And we’re ready to build on that past work.… because we know how much it is need­ed. Lives are at stake.

In the weeks, months, and years ahead, we will con­tribute our time, tal­ent, and trea­sure to ensure that Black Lives Mat­ter. We rec­og­nize this is a cause that will need our con­cern and resources on a long term basis. Head­lines fade; the mass media can be expect­ed to shift its atten­tion once it has tired of report­ing on this sub­ject, like it has in the past. But NPI’s com­mit­ment will remain.