 I think that all of my liberal friends have got to come to terms with the fact that incrementalist approaches to police reform have failed. I mean mandatory body cameras, implicit bias training, these are all approaches that have failed. And as a result of this obvious failure, I think that the protesters are opting for a more radical approach. And they've come up with a simple, but really powerful message. Defund the police. And I absolutely agree with this because people can see firsthand how, you know, defunding education affects their communities, right? We've hollowed out social safety net programs. So if we defund the police and we use the money that we take away from police and we funnel that back into our communities back into social programs back into education, we can see the impact that that might have, right? We actually followed through with this. So it's a really powerful and important message. And on that note, David Sarota in an op-ed for Jacobin lays out why so many people are responding positively to this message. It's because police spending is in fact out of control. And as a result, we've got to defund them. He writes defund the police has become a nationwide mantra. And for good reason, budget data from across the country show that spending on police has far outpaced population growth and drained resources from other public priorities. Basically, our cities have been siphoning money from stuff like education and social services and funneling the cash into ever larger militarized security forces. Nationally, the numbers are stark. Between 1977 and 2017, America's population grew by about 50% while state and local spending on police grew by a whopping 173% in inflation adjusted dollars according to data from the Urban Institute. In other words, the rate of police spending growth was tripled the rate of population growth. Chicago and New York embody the trends. The former has been losing population over the last decade. At the same time, Mayor Rahm Emanuel grew the police budget by 27% during his eight-year term to the point where Chicago now spends more than 38% of its general fund on police. Those increases coincided with the spate of police brutality scandals as well as budget cuts that resulted in teacher layoffs and the mass closure of Chicago public schools. And yet Chicago's new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has been pushing a new 7% increase in the police budget. In New York, it's a similar story. Back in 2008, the city spent $4.1 billion on its police force according to city council documents. 12 years later, the city is spending $6 billion on its police force. That's a 46% increase during a period in which the city's population growth was essentially flat. A new report by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer notes that in the last five years alone, spending on police rose by 22% driven by a 6% increase in the number of officers on the force. All this happened during a period when the city experienced many years of budget cuts to social services in schools. Indeed, as public citizen points out, New York's police budget is now more than the city spends on health, homelessness, youth development, and workforce development combined. These are hardly anomalies, as illustrated by a Center for Popular Democracy report looking at 12 major cities. That analysis concluded that governments have dramatically increased their spending on criminalization, policing, and mass incarceration, while drastically cutting investments in basic infrastructure and slowing investment in social safety net programs to the point where today, police spending vastly outpaces expenditures in vital community resources and services. So this is a really important article because it paints a really clear picture for us, right? If a state's population is remaining static, as is the case with New York, but yet their police budget increases, then what does that tell us? As the years go on, more and more we are over-policing states. And if you've got a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. In this case with the police officers, you know, if you have more militarized equipment and gear, and you know, there's more of you now, then of course you're going to over-police communities and we're going to see more instances of police brutality. So this is incredibly important to know because it makes sense why people are calling for the police to be defunded, right? As teachers across the United States are forced to buy supplies for their students with their own money, we have police that keep getting upgrades to gear, more military-style gear that they're using to police our communities. Why are we letting this happen? Why are we taking money out of the pockets of our educators and putting that in the hands of people who are policing? And they're doing a shitty job at that. Well, I mean, the answer is it's because I think mayors across the country, local officials, they are afraid of police forces. They have too much power. And so what we're kind of seeing with calls to defund the police is, you know, in the same way that I call for the military budget to be cut by 50 to 60, maybe 70%, we're seeing, you know, this happen at a local level where these inflated budgets of police precincts and, you know, police offices are needing to be redirected into the community rather than spending money on military police. Use that money for social services in the community. Use that money to improve our schools. Because guess what? Overpolicing communities is not going to lead to a reduction in crime. There are other socioeconomic factors that we have to look at here, right? We have to decriminalize drugs and sex work. We have to make large strides towards criminal justice reform, not just, you know, pumping more and more money into police departments. That's not going to do anything, right? So that's why I think that defund the police is such a powerful message because it's clear, it's concise. And when you hear it, you just, you get it, right? You see, oh, my kid's school has been defunded. It's dilapidated. I mean, it's funding has been cut. But the police officers, on the other hand, I could see firsthand how they always have brand new vehicles that they patrol our cities with. I can see how they have more riot gear, right? They never run out of tear gas canisters, whereas healthcare workers are running out of masks and PPE. I mean, people see this firsthand, right? It elicits this type of visceral reaction where something just kind of clicks and you realize, oh, this is a really easy step into, you know, stopping the issue. Now, you know, I think that defund the police is a simple message, but it does require more. But just at face value, I think that it resonates with people because you get it. It's self-explanatory. You defund the police because if they don't have the resources and the personnel to over-police our communities, then obviously we're going to see less instances of police brutality. You know, communities won't feel as if they are being occupied by a force who isn't actually looking out to serve and protect, right? They have power, so they just use that power. It's human psychology. So I think this is really important, and I think that looking at the details here, the data more specifically, like David Sorota did, is a really key component into changing public opinion. Because even though public opinion might not support policies like abolish the police, and I'm not sure necessarily what people feel about defunding the police, but I do know that a majority of Americans thought that it was justified for the third precinct of Minneapolis to burn to the ground. So people understand that change is needed currently. And I think that starting here, starting with the budgets, these bloated budgets of police departments in cities across the country, that's a really great start. But we've got to go further and really expand our thinking, expand the scope of what we think is possible or even can imagine as a possibility. We have to change the way that we look at this concept of policing and really reexamine it in a different way. Take policing out of the conversation and actually figure out ways to have government officials respond to the needs of their communities. That's the whole point of police, or that's supposed to be the point. It's to serve and protect. But if police officers aren't serving and protecting, if we see video after video after video after video of them abusing their power, you can't just sit idly by and keep opting for incremental changes when they've clearly failed. Because if the incremental changes would have worked, then don't you think they would have taken effect by now? Because how many times have we been calling on police reform? Civil rights activists have always been calling for it. But during the Ferguson era, when Obama was president, you see these types of incrementalist approaches be implemented. But did we ever see the police be demilitarized? Did we see less instances of police brutality? No, absolutely not. So the incrementalist approach has failed as it usually does. And now we've got to get more radical. We've got to listen to the people in the streets currently. And I think that they are really driving this conversation in an important direction. And I'm all for it. Defund the police. That's a really important first step.