Senator Manka Dhingra: Our communities need guardians on our streets, not warriors

Edi­tor’s Note: Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra serves as the Deputy Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader, as Vice Chair of the Sen­ate’s Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, as Chair of the Sen­ate’s Behav­ioral Health Sub­com­mit­tee, and is a found­ing board­mem­ber of NPI’s sib­ling, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion. On Sun­day, June 7th, she addressed atten­dees of the Wood­inville Peace March for Black Lives Mat­ter at DeY­oung Park. The fol­low­ing are her pre­pared remarks. 

In a just world, George Floyd, Bre­on­na Tay­lor, and Ahmaud Arbery would be alive today. The unfor­tu­nate truth in Amer­i­ca is that the dark­er your skin col­or, the hard­er life is for you. It is also true that the dark­er your skin col­or, the more like­ly you are to suf­fer vio­lence at the hands of the police.

That is not justice.

I had hoped that Wash­ing­ton had made progress over the last sev­er­al years to make this kind of injus­tice less like­ly here.

In 2018, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans over­whelm­ing­ly passed Ini­tia­tive 940 to hold police offi­cers account­able for exces­sive use of force.

In 2019, the Leg­is­la­ture unan­i­mous­ly passed leg­is­la­tion to affirm the initiative’s intent and make it legal­ly workable.

Just this year, the Leg­is­la­ture cre­at­ed the very first statewide Office of Equi­ty in the nation, to focus our state gov­ern­ment on address­ing the his­tor­i­cal lega­cy of racism that impacts our cur­rent institutions.

And for 2021 and beyond, we have a strong new agen­da from the Pover­ty Reduc­tion Work Group to undo struc­tur­al racism in state pol­i­cy by tack­ling income inequal­i­ty; decrim­i­nal­iz­ing pover­ty; and reduc­ing reliance on the crim­i­nal and juve­nile jus­tice systems.

But today, I am hor­ri­fied at the aggres­sive, para­mil­i­tary response by the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment to peace­ful pro­test­ers. That exces­sive response is not justice.

Espe­cial­ly when there are law enforce­ment agen­cies in com­mu­ni­ties across our state and our coun­try that are respond­ing so much better.

This is espe­cial­ly heart­break­ing to me because I have worked so hard to change the cul­ture of law enforce­ment. We don’t need war­riors polic­ing our soci­ety, we need guardians for our com­mu­ni­ty. I have been a part of cri­sis inter­ven­tion train­ing for law enforce­ment for over a decade and have seen first­hand how well these train­ings can and do work. And I have worked in the Leg­is­la­ture to reform our law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal jus­tice systems.

But the injus­tices we are see­ing now are a stark reminder that we have a lot more work ahead of us. So how does change come about?

Change will come when each and every one of us acknowl­edges this injus­tice; when each and every one of us grieves for this injus­tice; and when each and every one of us works to dis­man­tle the sys­tems of oppres­sion and racism.

The peace­ful protests right here and around our coun­try are a great upwelling of this right­eous grief.

Right now, we are tak­ing the first, nec­es­sary step toward real change.

But it will take us many more steps to get to the just world that we all want.

I want to first acknowl­edge and ful­ly rec­og­nize that our own state Sen­ate lacks the voice of even a sin­gle Black leg­is­la­tor, a voice that needs to cen­ter us today and always. Not one! There is one per­son run­ning, but not yet elect­ed.

It is imper­a­tive that our leg­isla­tive agen­da be shaped by the com­mu­ni­ty. Suc­cess­ful efforts toward change have always had their ori­gins at the local level.

Thank you for start­ing us on our jour­ney for real, mean­ing­ful change, by acknowl­edg­ing this injus­tice and griev­ing this injustice.

I look for­ward to work­ing with you to cor­rect this injustice.