Enough is Enough. Let’s take action now.

SAFETY & SECURITY: THE VISION

The police are meant to provide safety and security for our communities. But the police have always served another function in North America. The police have systematically inflicted violence against Black & Indigenous peoples across this continent. Black people across the world are demonstrating against this rebelling against the conditions that they are subjected to by police. Throughout North America, Black activists have coalesced around a call to #DefundThePolice.

Various jurisdictions have tried reform, training, and body cameras meant to hold police accountable. None of these measures have worked; the police keep killing Black people, often without ever having to be held accountable. The only solution is to defund the police, and to reimagine the way that we provide safety and security services for our society. This approach benefits all communities. The truth is that a close look at the activities of the police reveals that its services disastrously impact  our communities who deserve better.

This website is meant to be a central resource to support people who are making the arguments about why police must be defunded now. Black activists across North America are furiously working to get as much information as possible about how policing is an inherently anti-Black institution, as quickly as possible. The police murders of Black people are catastrophic. People are protesting from the Yukon, to Florida, and all around the world, demanding urgent action for the call to #DefundThe Police. It’s time that policy-makers follow suit.

Our lives; all black lives; are worth it.

Black Lives Matter is driven by the principle that all Black lives are inherently valuable. We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. 

Black Lives Matter is an abolitionist movement. We believe that prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished and replaced by institutions that value and affirm the flourishing of Black lives.

The movement believes in centering the experiences and leadership of the most marginalized Black people, including but not limited to those who are trans and queer, women and femmes, disabled and Mad , currently and formerly incarcerated, immigrants, working class, and poor.

Black Lives Matter recognizes the current systems we live inside of need to be radically transformed; a realignment of global power. Black Lives Matter recognizes the need to imagine a world outside of the current carceral systems of policing and prisons and draws its lineage in part from the prison abolition movement that calls for closing prisons and divestment from police. Black Lives Matter instead calls for investment in community supports, jobs, education, housing, health care, and services that deliver safety, security, and a violence-free life for each member of society.

BLACK & INDIGENOUS SOLIDARITY

Police systems were created to protect the private property of the wealthy in Europe. This included their human property – enslaved people. Settlers in the US and Canada expanded the purpose of police to clear Indigenous people from their lands and to kidnap Black people who had liberated themselves from enslavement. These slave patrols are the building blocks of North America’s police systems. They are tools of anti-Blackness and colonialism and were created to brutalize Black and Indigenous communities. Police systems continue to serve this function.

Black and Indigenous people have complex relationships here on Turtle Island, but our liberations are intrinsically linked.

We are in solidarity with Indigenous communities and support Indigenous resurgence.