How to Defund the Police
Protesters on Morrison Bridge- Portland, Oregon, June 4, 2020, ink on paper
This summer as I’ve been digging into a new series of paintings depicting major moments of the Portland Uprising I’ve also been reckoning with our city’s recent and ongoing activism. It’s got me wondering what lessons we on the left could learn from what’s happened here. In what ways do activist culture and electoral strategy overlap? How can they feed each other and where are the fissures? What I’d like us to ultimately consider is what are the next 3-5 steps toward defunding and abolishing the police?
I recently heard an episode of the NYT’s podcast The Daily, wherein Nicole Hannah Jones explained American journalists tend to assume that everything will work out fine— that the institutions of American Democracy are so baked in that their crumbling is literally inconceivable to most (white) reporters.
America is often held up as the longest standing Democracy in the world. In its strictest sense, we have only been a true democracy since the passage of the civil rights act in 1964. Seen in this light, it becomes much easier to perceive the frailty of the institutions that white journalists take for granted.
Black Lives Matter Flag, ink on paper
Fareed Zakaria, popular journalist and media pundit, first rose to prominence on the power of an article he penned for Foreign Affairs magazine in late 1997 titled The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. In it, he accurately predicted a wave of authoritarians who use democratic means to secure power and then use that power to erode democracy. Zakaria quotes an American diplomat speaking about the 1996 Bosnian elections, “Suppose the election was declared free and fair,” he said, and those elected are “racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration]. That is the dilemma.”
This paradigm should be familiar. Think Putin, Duterte, Bolsonaro, etc. And while Tr*mp has been unseated, this conclusion was never foretold.
Portland Riot Van, ink on paper
Portland’s activists have understood the threat of Tr*mp and the extreme right as an existential one from the very beginning. Many clearly saw the dangers of Steve Bannon, William Barr, and a republican base willing to fall in line with even Trump’s most extreme positions. Portland witnessed the very real reality of American Fascism actively eroding democratic institutions and we absolutely responded proportionally.
Hundreds turned up at our small regional airport for nights on end to challenge an unjust travel ban. Tens of thousands marched through heavy winter rain to show solidarity with women. When white supremacists tried to organize on our turf we showed up to drown them out and send them packing every. single. time.
Most recently, following the police murder of George Floyd, thousands of Portlanders showed up night after night after night for months to challenge police brutality— through tear gas, beatings, wildfires, right wing detractors, and still more tear gas. When protesters were criticized for sometimes causing property damage, local activist Gregory McKelvey responded by writing “If the world is ending, some people are going to act like it. It's amazing to me that liberal Democrats really do believe that we are on the brink of something like Armageddon and then are shocked that some people behave like it. What did you picture Armageddon to look like? Public testimony?”
PPA Burning, ink on paper
The current focus of Portland’s activist community is a recall campaign of the mayor Tevis (Ted) Wheeler. OPB’s Politics Now reports that among those in attendance at a recent signature gathering orientation event were more conservative individuals who oppose Ted Wheeler for not using MORE force on protesters. This struck me as alarming. A successful recall campaign will absolutely require more than the activist left, but building coalitions with pro-police activists is not likely the quickest way to police abolition.
Not only is this sort of shortsightedness or lack of strategy endemic to the American Left, it is painfully reminiscent of the mayoral election we just experienced less than a year ago. For those unfamiliar, the incumbent mayor was facing Sarah Iannarone— who compensated her perceived lack of charisma (truly more a problem of patriarchy than Iannarone, but that’s a whole other essay) with a stack of ambitious and clearly articulated policy proposals. Following the George Floyd Uprising, much of Portland’s left instead threw its support behind longtime activist Teressa Raiford. Raiford herself said she was not running, although she did allow a community of activists to coordinate and promote a write-in campaign on her behalf.
The result was that Mayor Wheeler was re-elected with only 46% of the vote. There’s been much reluctance to call what happened “vote splitting.” And yeah, it’s definitely not that simple. But there’s absolutely some element of truth to that sentiment. The fact is if the two campaigns could have built a coalition and consolidated resources they’d have handily won city hall last year. I’ve never heard anyone ask either candidate why this wasn’t considered. Frankly, they would have made a great team. Shit, they still could.
Sarah20— Write In Teressa Raiford!, ink on paper
As we move forward to repair the damage of the Tr*mp years, recover from a pandemic, and face down climate collapse we must remember to think. For years we’ve been reacting to crisis after crisis, but as Elaine Scarry makes clear, emergencies negate thought. “The implicit claim of emergency is that all procedures and all thinking must cease,” she writes, “because the emergency requires that 1) an action must be taken, and 2) the action must be taken relatively quickly.”
Instead of merely moving from one emergency response to the next, it’s time to coordinate a strategy. To build coalitions and envision, literally imagine together, the world we’re trying to materialize. “Rather than emergency bringing about the end of thinking,” Scarry writes, “thinking should bring about the end of emergency.”
W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), ink on paper
Towards that end I’d like to openly imagine how to abolish the police. I’m speaking only of Portland, here.
Elect abolitionist candidates to city council
Divert significant funding from PPB to Portland Street Response
Use the negotiation process to eliminate or severely restrict PPA Union Contract
Fund community based violence reduction programs
House the Houseless through a steep residential vacancy tax
What are some ideas you’ve had or heard? How are we going to build the future we want?
