Pursuit of meaningful change both in the wake of george floyd step and in the midst of a larger legacy of Racial Injustice in this country. I want to thank you all for joining and i want to thank jean henning for her organizing the series. Let me introduce the moderator of todays roundtable repressor Christy Lopez. Professor lopez joined our faculty in january 2017 right after completing a federal investigation of the Chicago Police department will goodwill serving of the Department Just a Civil Rights Division she led that investigation and many others to examine patterns and practices of unconstitutional policing across the country including in new orleans, los angeles and ferguson. Since joining our faculty professor lopez has cofounded our Innovative Policing Program which is now launching a Prevention Program called abler active bystander ship for recently professor lopez has written up that somehow the Police Culture could have saved George Floyds life and what the funding of police really to funding of the police really means. Professor lopez i will turn it over to you. Thank you so much and i really appreciate the support you in georgetown has shown on this issue and agreement should appreciate the work of jean henning in making this happen. I want to thank all the viewers who have joined today. We have all been talking about the need to educate ourselves more on the issues and you are taking out the time to do that so i really appreciate that. And i speak to the panels when i say that as well. My name is Christy Lopez member for western practice of georgetown a coat direct the policing project and id like to invite the rest of our panelists to turn their cameras on now as i introduce the purpose of the panel and look at the roadmap for what we are going to talk about today. Since George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis Police on may 25 and the protests that followed it seems that there might need key change underway and how america views policing. We seen evidence of this and protests across United States and just yesterday the Associated Press released a poll that found that 95 of americans believe that Police Reform in some capacity is necessary. That is unprecedented and a striking change from polls conducted just five years ago. One of the things that many people find interesting about the changes in the National Conversation about policing is the growing recognition that to receive the kind of Public Safety we want we have to look the own policing. We have to question our assumptions by what we have been mean by Public Safety and how we achieve it and thats why this series is called we have to confront the fact that criminalizing poverty and making 10 million arrests at a year and mask incarceration has caused tremendous harm and black amenities. Theres no question that in the longterm for the country to have this important conversation to elevate the longstanding call for defunding the police but as many of you know this has led to confusion about these terms and slogans that are counterproductive and will alienate Police Reform allies. What we will discuss today is how Police Abolition is not a mere slogan. Has its roots primarily, its an ideological framework that has occurred in mostly feminine thinking that is brilliant positive and redemptive. Yes the framework has a plan for what to do about Sexual Violence and murder in a World Without police. If you learn nothing else i hope you gain an appreciation of the thoughtfulness for the mostly black females to develop it. Would a look at how the idea of Police Evolution in this abolitionist framework that has been around far longer then today and we will ask our panelists to address questions that we submitted prior to this panels starting. You asked questions about what sorts of changes to policing could change more broadly and an abolitionist framework is compared to reform approach. Ill introduce the three panelists at first we have Tahir Duckett a 2017 graduate of georgetown law and is now a civil rights attorney at loman colfax where he practices law in housing and policing. Executive Committee Member and is the founder of a communitybased organization dedicated to addressing Sexual Violence. For the past several months hes been writing up look on Police Abolition and long before it became a topic of National Conversation because we talked about it last summer weve been speaking of these issues for quite some time. Justin hansford a graduate of georgetown law and professor law at Howard Law School and the Civil Rights Center there. He is a Brilliant Police activist. He created the group ferguson which traveled the numbers with young activists to deliver the message to the u. N. Commission against torture in geneva and 2017. Allegra mcleod is one of the nations promise scholars teaching and writing about the criminal legal system and legal theory. Allegra work as a criminal defense lawyer and is involved in work on a pro bono racist. The referee said many questions and we have incorporated them into the questions ill be asking the panelists and feel free to submit extra questions. Just in and of i cry want to start with the title of this program what does Police Abolition mean . Is described differently by the people and if you look closely there is an element about iteration so can you tell us what Police Abolition means to you and is it the same as others ascribe to the term . For me Police Abolition is not just a destination but a project. It starts with the recognition that police and prisons have failed to do what they claim to do that they dont actually keep us safe and in fact have been a source of immeasurable harm to individuals and communities particularly lack individuals and committees and more importantly that we can do better. If you looked around at the past few weeks at the indiscriminate and arbitrary use of worst against protesters and individuals, the arrest of Police Officers across the nation, the acrosstheboard rejection of accountability and indeed the solidarity with officers who have committed horrific acts of violence like in buffalo where they applauded the officers who pushed down the 75yearold man and left him bleeding on the sidewalk and that man is still in the hospital by the way or in atlanta where there are reports of work slowdowns in solidarity with the officer who shot Rayshard Brooks in the back and as he fled. I dont know how the institution appears to be so far gone. If there were another way to keep herself safe without relying on it ideal for those are things that you have thought over the past few weeks i think thats the first step in being an abolitionist. Yes there is more. Its a project and they think the other panels will talk more about what it means to be an active abolitionist but at its core abolition is about having the imagination and the courage not to settle for cages and violence is the only way in which we tend to each others fate and hold each other accountable. Thank so much. A lot of people are actually asking themselves that question right now. Am i an abolitionist and how do i look at myself . Justin lets turn to you. You talk about a turning point you had and how it deepened your understanding of abolition. Can you tell us about that . Sure. My experiences with the question of Police Violence as you describe beyond the incident with mr. Floyd goes back to early in my life but most dramatically in ferguson when i lived in st. Louis i had the opportunity to be a protester as well as practicing attorney and a law professor at the same time when i was helping the ferguson activist there. The most significant part of my experience of ferguson was taking part in the representation of my family and having the opportunity to merck to to work closely with mike rounds wife when she sought to take it to the United Nations and was the turning point of my career. I got to work with her and help her produce a testimony and i saw up close the type of anguish that she had to experience. She has talked about the ptsd and the trauma of seeing her son lying on the ground for over four hours in the hot sun in august of 2014. You know she continues to have effects to this day and will have those effects for the rest of her life. At the time there was nothing i wanted more than to see the conviction of Darren Wilson who killed mike brown and the punishment of the killer in my honest assessment would have been something which was fitting to create some sort of sense of justice for myself, for many of us throughout the country but most importantly for leslie and her experience even today she still lives tonight community, has seen the killing of her son in that community. We have many situations, George Zimmerman, not just Police Officers that those in similar situations who have not only seemed to not face consequences but in some way shape or form are supported in their continued feeling of being justified for the killing. For me its a big turning point or a big challenge to move towards an abolitionist framework which would demand that if we are going to abolish Something Like policing or even abolish imprisonment we would have to move away from this conception of justice as revenge or retribution and think of another way to create justice for the families, for the communities that have been broken apart by the violence of the state which the state initiated. They brought the violence to us in so the decision to not think that the fair responses to wearing violence to them in return is an ethical decision more so than a decision based solely on any other principle and its a hard decision to make but if i think hard about what i would like to see for leslie, we have been working recently to try to create an opportunity for there to be a fund for victims of Police Violence and their families so things Like Mental Health services can be provided for families. Funding in case a person were killed was the primary breadwinner for the family like george floyd and eric garner, funds to support those families. Its perhaps the case that justice looks like reparations more so than justice looks like it should be the justice or if we are going to take the perspective that is not justice that its not justice in another self we would use the term revenge to conceptualize what it is i wanted when it came to Darren Wilson George Zimmerman or others. For many people thats an important principle to understand when folks are arguing for abolition. Its a very generous argument. Saberi benevolent argument. Its not an argument that is a crazy wild argument from the left from radicals produced an argument from people who have done some interior work, since virtual work which allows them to move past the desire for revenge and this is not just a situation when it comes to individual Police Killings. When you talk about race as a principle people around the country and around the world should be very happy that people are not interested in revenge as much as they are interested in abolition which is again a legitimate principle saying we think justice goes beyond revenge. For me i admire all the people who call for revolution as opposed to retribution and i think they are leaders that we should be trying to emulate them continue to admire. Thank you so much justin. Im so glad that you emphasized that because its one of the things people dont recognize about the abolitionist framework. The word that comes to my mind is how generous it is the moral clarity of that in the interior work the people at them and i want to underscore that this was done by people who have been victims for literally their entire history in this country from one small example the class versus cocaine individual sentencing the overwhelmingly harsh sentences that have been premised on people and the same committees are looking to get away from that. We all need to get away from that and we can all learn from that we can all recognize how truly profound that is so thank you so much for telling us about your own journey to get to that point. Lets turn to you allegra to talk about what abolition means to you and just a bit about how it fits into the larger structure but how is Police Abolition fitting into that framework for you . Thank you so much, Christy Lopez and doctors Justin Hansford and Tahir Duckett for being open to these ideas but i wanted to begin by recognizing the moment of great possibility in states in historic uprising against Racial Injustice around the world and at the same time there are forces gathering to redirect an abolition to make this moment less transformative than it could be protracted signed an executive disorder reducing the legislative Congress Related to police or form in their proposals to moderately reduce Police Jurisdictions around the country but these proposals in my view largely veiled to grass the radical demand for Abolition Movements that justin and tahir have begun to elucidate and for the most part bringing about change for the call for abolitionist today is a call for radical change and is connected to earlier radical abolitionist with mens and legacies in and the criminal legal system against imperialism and militarize violence around the home and around the world. Exploitation of black people and of other marginalized people. Abolition is not only about tearing things down but its a positive radical movement for egalitarian political and economic order. What i mean by radical in contrast to reform its . Is angela davis reminds us radicalism gets to the root. To get at the root of injustice will inspire us to make radical changes not window dressing reform. You also in numerous other domestic and foreignpolicy to uphold deepseated racial and the moment will fail to bring the changes that captured by limited reform committed to preserving the status quo. Its more than retraining police and the reforms that the Trump Administration and by congress by critical resistance in more like abolition two underscore. Trump legislation proposed for example the band chokehold. Eric garner was killed by a chokehold and the jurisdiction that prohibited choke holds. Moreover it doesnt prohibit other legal ways of killing people more than it prohibits other experiences perpetrated by police. It fails to bring about meaningful change over decades. Of course demilitarizing the police and qualified immunity would be steps in the right action but abolition is a call for Something Else not reflected in these measures but to call for a way to align our police and prosecution and prison and for justice in the domestic and political economy. My view is the call for abolition does mean what they seem to suggest that they are calling for radical change because we need radical change to defeat Structural Racism but its also important to emphasize abolition is as much a positive process is a negative process along the lines of being developed that abolition is eliminating racialized violence in the criminal system but is also crucially about doling a more just and equitable world in developing new more honest understanding of our current world. I wanted to offer more from chicago or abolitionist organizers have explored last couple of years and this has a way of addressing the inequalities in chicago abolitionists as pastor reparations order in 2015. In this reparations ordinance provided type financial compensation and provided Mental Health and medical care educational scholarships public memorialization of prince changed the School Curriculum so children would learn history. Abolitionist organizer marian explained the aim to offer the beginnings of positive justice beyond criminal prosecution and punishment but a few years later in 2017 abolitionist youth activist in chicago began to push the campaign and more broadly for more budgeting repurchase of the tory budgeting is another positive abolitionist project which allows the people of the city whether chicago d. C. Corporate seller one of the origin points of purchase of the tory funding on a more purchased the tory Democratic Base is to shape public decisions and direct public spending toward equally distributed Public Education Public Health Affordable Housing towards kennedybased organization towards alternative First Responders to avoid a solidarity and cooperatives commit to trust in a way for mullah tourist and racial police in other words handinhand to defund the police has long been a call to Fund Black Communities to create a more just and equitable order. Theres so much more to say about all of this but i will stop there. Yes, there is. I thank you for pointing out a couple of things. You are going to give some examples from chicago and the Defense Movement and the Abolition Movement but i very much appreciate you emphasized in that abolition is only partly about defunding and redistributing resources but building up lack communities and that is at the heart of that and really very important. We are going to turn to that. We are going to turn to some of the interplay between reforms as you pointed out and all of the trump or forms dont go far enough in the bill itself doesnt go far enough in what it means but first before we go there to the and bolts i want to look the more deeply into this intellectual history for this democratic framework of not lisa abolition but abolition. It is important and something that is a myth in so many conversations that we have had not surprisingly since many of the people ive never heard of this before and trying to figure out what this means. Can each of you tell us a little bit about how Police Evolution fits into the broader evolutionist tradition and what that means . Why dont we start with you justin talk a little bit about that. I think its significant to note that the history of abolition in the United States is a history of constitutionalism. In fact there is an article that was recently published in the harvard lowered view by Dorothy Roberts entitled abolition constitutionalism which focuses on prison abolition but frames it as part of the long history of primarily black activists and also black women activists in there is a long history of people who have seen abolition as again not a completely unprecedented phenomenon but one that is rooted in our nations history in terms of resisters and even more so than those who have persisted since slavery who called the abolitionist of slavery and called for jim crowe. Its significant to note that their calls were routed in the interpretation of the constitution that argued that based on the preamble and the assertion that this is a country that was built on the idea of freedom, the systems that are antifreedom in the truest sense whether slavery of course, jim crow and if you think about mask incarceration from a person perspective and racialized policing and Police Violence as the gatekeeper or the initial introduction that many people have too the mask incarceration system to racial profiling, the use of always on ferguson in the ferguson report which you helped to create christie, the idea that certain communities are targeted for enhanced enforcement of the law allowing them to be transitioned into a state of criminalization for activities that on the other side of town are everyday activities. I think that is a tradition of persistence that is based and not just the history of activism but also a history of constitutional interpretation. I think when we do this type of work its imperative that we look at it as coming from a tradition. Its not something that the activists invented in 2020. Theres a history of scholarship on abolition which allegra is the expert on. Theres a history of legal work when it comes to abolition. People have been creating frameworks through an abolitionist lends for reimagining, first reimagining our economy when we were talking about abolition from enslavement , reimagining public space, reimagining education and of course today reimagining Public Safety. These are old different systems that an abolitionist lends historically has been able to reinvent so if you look at it through the lens of that history its the most recent incarnation of using lends to reinvent a particular system that intersects with all of our lives. Smit thank you so much for pointing that out and the constitutional law and constitutional thinking. I suspect many the people doing this today are lawyers or future lawyers and one of the reasons i felt it was important to go to law school because that thinking is activists have work to do and Community Organizers have work to do and lawyers and prosecutors have work to do and allegra wrote a wonderful article. Thats the idea behind it in which she talks about how some of the Supreme Court cases really do reinforce a problematic approach and part of the idea that one of the places we know legal field must look is inward and as judges and prosecutors and lawyers do. I will go to tahir and see what you have two abdicate. I know that you have got some things here as well. Yeah, yeah creative think its so important as we think about abolition to think yes abe scholars and actors that have led the way. Allegra mentioned angela davis and miriam cobb of. Some port and for us to think about and appreciate and invest in the organization doing the abolitionist work and our committees are and doing abolitionist work in our communities for a long time. Its really important that we the calls for abortion are coming first and foremost from communities that are most affected by crime. And so when we think about the concerns about what are we going to do about crime and what are we going to do about unsafe neighborhoods it is the people who are in these neighborhoods and who are investing in trying to fix those neighborhoods and a black woman Led Organization or collective action who are investing serious physical efforts, serious emotional labor in building Safer Communities and so many of these organizations are saying look police are not helping us go through this process. So yes it is important for us to be doing reading and to be listening to the scholars whove been thinking about this for a long time. We have incredible abolitionist leaders in our communities. I say abolitionist leaders, and mean much more in the way of being the sort of positive abolition working to actively build neighborhoods in neighborhoods where police are no longer necessary where prison is not something that we rely on in order to keep us safe. When you think about investing in black immunities left behind by jim crow and mask incarceration and hundreds of years of extraction of resources without reinvestment these are the kinds of organizations that really are at the forefront and have to be the first place that we look to when we think about the reinvestment of the funds that we are calling for divesting from current. A lot of these local organizations are not the National Ones that sparkle and shine in moments like these and i dont have to name those organizations reach and appoint talking about. Ones shows up on google when we search for civil rights organizations. We are talking about organizations that are often volunteer led and many of them have been shutout, who have been shutout of the nonprofit Industrial Complex and dont have the connections to wealth and to funders that will help them bring their organization had the incredible work that they are doing on less than shoestrings to be completely honest. Allegra anything to add before we move to what this looks like in real life . To hear justins comments it might be worth identifying to specific genealogies of two abolitionist movements. Organizers like angela davis miriam cobb on as was mentioned as well as me me cam and others some of began the develop an abolitionist practice in the 1990s through intellectual work and organizing as justin and tahir have recognized that they did this in response to Sexual Violence and state violence in the failure of the criminal legal system to respond to this violence. These organizers are concerned with how black people and other people of color when police and prison warned of more harm or fail to respond at all. Organizations like insight and survived and punish these black feminist organizers and others continued the efforts of the black panthers another lack radicals to reenvision collective wellbeing without prison for the black dancers neglected to plan your communitybased Public Health clinics free breakfast programs for children and promote Public Safety cop walk initiatives to reduce violence and develop transformative justice and related communitybased interventions to address gender harm that are just updated. In an International Constellation of practices and resources that are devoted to responding to Sexual Violence Domestic Violence and lgbtq violence in abolitionist terms and the resources circulated by leaders. Abolition is an port and respect of feminist projects and women of color feminism. One of the important intellectual histories of contemporary abolitionist movements that i have heard noted can be traced to the scholarly work of angela davis and professor Wilson Gilmore who art power cofounders of critical resistance is organizations that i just mentioned. In her book are prison obsolete almost 20 years ago angela davis is continuing these long interconnected struggles with slavery and imperialism and the genocide of Indigenous People as well as other forms of structural oppression. It emphasizes the aspect of positive abolition in connection to the work of david e. Dubois w. E. B. Dubois and in his work davis draws out how dubois again advised the failure of reconstruction to end slavery. In fact people were forced to labor on the same plantations where they labored as in part because of the criminal legal system that penalize the conduct of free black people and confined them to chain gangs. These ideas and popularized by jim crow. Dubois were guards these developments as if it is a failure of the positive abolition that failure of reconstruction which davis and Dorothy Gilmore argue remain the work of abolitionist today and for davis and gilmore whose work has inspired todays movement the question is how to create a social order thats generally inclusive that reckons with the Racial Injustices and without the violent policing that we have witnessed in the horrific murders of george floyd in so many others. Black feminist abolitionist has to be imparted an economic answer one that stresses the exploitation visited on black people and other marginalized people in this country and around the world historically and presently. Evolution is about a new economic order and this project is domestic but its necessarily international and should be linked in the chat as well. Evolution abolition whether its a green deal or read dilbert the tory budgeting reparations monetary these are all different ideas but abolitionist and recognize policing is connected to the social abandonment of lack communities indigenous communities and other marginalized people and abolition seeks to abolish these unjust economic and social orders to create more new equitable political and economic inequality as well. Tank so much allegra and with what all we have given us, youve given us a lot of information about what abolitionist and although this is to inform the how, how do we get there and thats why you want to turn now, we are going to provide a list prism of you asked in the q a for more reading from this. Will provide a list if you are and anxious in the theory behind a lot of this as well as how you do it or he lets move now to the how you might actually do this and i want to point out quickly very teen thousand Law Enforcement agencies in this country in 50 states. We do not have a national system. The only National Standard we have is the constitution and for any number of reasons that is not sufficient. Abolition of thinking with that different just as police have for monks different everyplace for theres no one answer to what this would look like or thats why we think is so important we talk about these principles so as we move on you can keep as a mind as you are trying to figure out how to navigate the systems youll be navigating as you attempt to look at how the change policing. Speaking as someone whos been doing Police Reform for decades to me to funding the police seems like the Natural Evolution of reform at least to some extent defunding. Based on what we have learned about what works and doesnt work we have two stop putting all of our eggs in one basket. Became clear to me and ferguson and brought home for a lot of reasons allegra brought up to a lot of people agreed that for the houston chief of police is the head of the hugely influenced so policing Organization Recently said to respond to Mental Illness and even violence something other than force is not only laudable but an absolute necessary longterm goal. In that respect in terms of shifting these funds into social programs doesnt seem that radical to me. Others think the abolitionist framework is much more farreaching than other approaches are justin told us a little bit about that in his approach to how. Can you give us a sense and i want to get really specific here about how abolitionist reform would be different than reformist reform and how the fund efforts fit into all of this framework and how would we, the question we always get how would respond to questions like Domestic Violence island homicide in a world where we look at it differently than today. I dont think you can wrap your mind around abolition without preparation. I think as you go handinhand because if you are looking at exploring options and alternatives to distributive justice, the question is how do you get justice in a situation where there has been harm. People who are looking for justice with retribution, may possibly be denied that through traditional methods need an alternative method. And i believe the operation is a better method. Seven we think about what i described earlier in terms of provisions and local budget, for the Mental Health services for educational services, and things that are targeted in the communities that have been directly harmed. In many cases i think many of us think about the role of police in society has a creator of Public Safety. That conceptualization of policing is an incorrect and inaccurate understanding of what police do. I think if we are more clear on what Police Actually do in our society, overwhelmingly i believe that over 90 percent of police work is responding to non violent incidents. Theres a lot of violence that is created by police. They intervene and stop less violently thinking to create more violence than people think. And the truth of the matter is, protecting the Public Safety, the moore capito accurately, and using this as an example. Will you live in a society with are not enough ventilators and people with people in hospitals that we have tanks for police. If youre really trying to create Public Safety, people would be safer with more ventilators and on endlessly. So if you understand the safety accurately, its less confusing if you think about taking Financial Resources away from institution like police who are creating a lot of harm, we have documented Police Killings that are astronomical compared to other countries. We have yet to document the amount of injuries and acts of violence that dont kill people but still maim and seriously harm people. So if we were to take resources away from and conceptualize Public Safety as police intervention, think about these other interventions and or Public Health system and our communities in terms of programs like in things that have been created by people who had traditions and been held up for years. If we invested those programs, we would be creating more safe environments. Sent try to be kind of in a kind of think that you have to follow the money in my perspective. And after reallocate the money. Its important for us to move from in 2014, if you want to think about black lives matter from the podium, there is a slogan that was a symbolic slogan and we shifted to a slogan today which is a substitution slogan that includes the proposal to be given directly to local state and national legislatures. The National Slogan itself. I know people having a hard time coming to chris with it. But i think the demand is so clear the financial demand, it is so clear that its almost hard to keep talking over and over again. What does that mean read thing is pretty clear, defend the police. Think the problem is wrapping your mind around and coming to grips with the actual need for following through man. And i think what your answer really underscores that theres a lot of work here. And start with this idea that you have to re think Public Safety. Its not just the criminal Justice System thing. It is about Public Health system in the education system. In the really do the work what are my Police Duties pretty we need so many people doing this. Can we have more Public Safety. In the abolitionist approach, is one of the things you pointed out as it is not just about the defining. Its essential in that it is to build up those other institutions that have to be heart of any abolitionist strategy and the reallife. Im partially there is no one answer because every community will look differently in terms of what theyre doing with Public Safety and the current role that the police play. But almost certainly you will have to think about strip shifting resources. Tell us about what this looks like in real life. Especially talk about the question people have, what do we do about homicides Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. You run an organization that works on reducing Sexual Violence. We think about this for you obviously care about this issue and you dont want to see a world where police go away theres chaos on the streets. I want to start by diving a little bit more that was just worth mentioning. I think it is really important for folks to have a sense of the role of Police Officers actually play now. When it comes to Public Safety. Conduct that link into the chat is a link to a piece that the New York Times just this week on how Police Actually spend their times read from around eight and ten incidents handled by Police Officers are considered by police to be non criminal matters in the first place. Left on average, one person every two weeks and that majority of those parts felony arrests. 40 percent of Police Officers and high crime area in new york city, station of the 40 percent of Police Officers do not make a single felony arrest in here. So when you look at the Police Officers time, the New York Times link that i just dropped she was a 4 percent of the Police Officers time is spent dealing with Violent Crimes. So right off the top of the mets, when folks are worried about when i call somebody, who is going to be there. It was going to respond. It is a fraction of a fraction of what would actually that police are being asked to do pretty vast majority that we are asking them to do the kind of securities that inevitably results in the ongoing harassment that we see in black communities. I also want to put this in context here in the district of columbia. We have about 4200 Police Officers here in the district of columbia. 700,000 is the population. 1700 Violent Crimes for the entire year recorded in washington dc last year. At that rate, each Police Officer would have to handle a Violent Crime once every two and half years or so. Even when they are working on crimes, the most effective way of handling the problem. Nationwide Police Officers only make an arrest and some of the homicides in many black Communities Police only make interesting about a few homicides. Seven people asked me, what are we going to do about murderers. Blessing will be doing about them right now. Were investing hundred and 50 billion nationwide in a system that is designed are supposed to keep us safe. Is not designed he was safe. It is supposed to go. And yes, the actual effectiveness is far from clear. I dont talk specifically about Sexual Violence because it is perhaps the single most obvious leg and wish police failed to do for they are supposed to do. Studies suggest that about thousand Sexual Assault in dc everywhere. Only 92 were even reported. So we are talking about a fraction even make it into the prospect of the system. We have to think about why that is the case. And much of that is because of the systems has had, such a poor record of handling sexual is also nobody wants are reporting the first place. Survivors have often told me that when they do report, they been traumatized by the police and prosecutors in ways that are just as harmful as insult itself. Its are talking about only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of people who commit Sexual Violence are actually called caught and convicted. And if they are convicted, we send them to prison prettiness one of the most violent places on earth. So what we are asking and what abolitionists are asking is instead of investing in these responses, that we think much much more about prevention in the first place. That requires investing in programs yet like we think the programs that he started here in dc on the Sexual Violence prevention work particularly focusing on helping adolescent boys during the consent education in schools. Working with adults to help them teach kids how to draw boundaries and build practices themselves. Ill be honest, i work a lot with people who are survivors of Sexual Violence. In most of the people that i talked to, do not think that we should be relying more heavily on police. Or on prisons in order to prevent or respond to acts of Sexual Violence in fact most of the organizers i know who are abolitionists, are pushing for these changes and pushing for not to respond to Sexual Violence and with incarceration. In their themselves survivors. So centering those voices means that we need to address the time and energy and focusing on prevention and on accountability practices that do not rely on the same sort of programs that there telling us our be traumatized in the first place. Suet thank you. This only minute left but i want to underscore that listening to the people and asking them what they want to see policing like in the future is a really good place to start. And many victims will tell you that this Current System is not working. Its interesting to note in the past vastly to be more proactive and a lot of this is just recognizing that prevention is good. Maybe they would be better at doing proactive preventative work. Late i want to give each of you a chance what can i do. Only the chance to tell us a little bit of time we have left, three things that people can do. To work on these issues going forward. Nunnally tomorrow but but in the coming days and weeks and months. I think one important thing to ask of yourselves billing on a kristi just suggested, support black lives movements for justice to donate to black abolitionists and funds and efforts for mutual aid project to help people that are held in jail strictly because they were too poor to post bond. I think it is important as justin suggested to support efforts to deal openly and honestly the tremendous debt owed to black and Indigenous People in this country. I also think it is important to support the solidarity, and that budgeting efforts. Answers to build economic power in those communities. Thank you so much. Those are really important things to be thinking about pretty. Justin, what if god. I think also support candidates for Political Office and generally committed to addressing racial inequality and supporting the movement to create a more just approach to Public Safety. An additional to supporting those on a national level, think about the south thought of supporting them all local level. Right here in washington dc we have local campaigns to cut spending for policing in dc. In the council who is in full of some part of that initiative who was victorious a couple of weeks ago. We see also, theres programming locally like the real news in baltimore. At a National Program that is definitely places you can look for information on these issues. Sergeant look beyond traditional news in the New York Times and Washington Post for your news on these issues of the have more informed perspective. Im just 21. The place we have now is a product of an willingness to engage. Neighbors make noise, neighbors make noise arent theres a homeless man on my doorstep, i will call the cops. I think is the commitment to all do more. We are outsourcing our Community Fabric to Police Officers. I also mean different individual choices when it comes to how we bond in our cities. Industry is not with us. We cant just expect the mayor to do the right thing. We have to push to reinvest and give brian the ball long term. That means participating in the process more than just voting. Think is much. Talking about more interior work their part as well as community building. And of both aspects of the path forward. I just want to thank everybody. Our panelists being here today and sharing your incredible insights. As i said, we will be sending out a list of resources if you want to dig more deeply into these issues. Thank you so much for this panel and for this entire time. Thank you when do you think we can do about that, Police Reform coronavirus continuing to affect the country, watch our live unfiltered coverage of the governments response with briefings from the white house, congress, governors and mayors from across the country updating the situation read and from the campaign 202012, join the conversation every day on life call in program, washington journal. And if you missed any of our live coverage on watch anytime on demand, cspan. Org for us and on the go with the free cspan radio app. House Homeland Security on intelligence and held a hearing yesterday under threat that still persist up from isis and al qaeda. And from terrorist organizations. The Peace Agreement between the u. S. And the taliban, the rise of potential islamic policy ten the nature of interest for root causes of terrorism, not just the actions of terrorist organizations. Spreading this propaganda, take
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