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Defund the police
83 Plays4 years ago
Edmonton and Calgary spend nine times more on the police than they spend on housing the homeless or social programs. Combined the two cities spend $750 million a year on cops. We talk with Reakash Walters and Molly Swain about how to divest from police and invest in the community.
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Transcript
Escalation of Police Violence and Global Context
00:00:16
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney, and we're recording today here in Amiswichiwa, Skigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta. And folks, it is an extremely dark time here in North America. For the past week or so, police in the United States have continued to escalate violence against peaceful protests that erupted after Minneapolis police murdered an unarmed black man named George Floyd by kneeling on his throat and neck until he died.
00:00:45
Speaker
Police forces in major American cities across the United States have continued to commit police brutality at these anti-police brutality protests. Unarmed protesters have been shot to death. Children have been maced. Police cars are driving into crowds of people at high speeds with frightening regularity. Armed white supremacist vigilante groups are roaming the streets with the tacit approval of law enforcement.
Brutality in Canada: Solutions and Perspectives
00:01:10
Speaker
And today on the pod,
00:01:11
Speaker
We want to make this clear that this is not just an American problem, that police in Canada are just as brutal and violent against black and brown bodies as they are in the United States. But we also want to talk about what we can do about it. Solutions that like only crusty anarchists and radicals were talking about just a few years ago are now entering the mainstream. Defunding and disarming the police and abolishing prisons are now on the table.
00:01:35
Speaker
And to talk about these issues, we have two incredible guests. Uh, first up, uh, Molly Swain. Molly is a member of freelance free peoples and anti-colonial indigenous led penal abolition group based out of Edmonton, Alberta. Molly, welcome to the pod. We also have Raya Cash Walters on the line, Raya Cash.
00:01:53
Speaker
is a descendant of Jamaican Maroons. She is a community organizer and article student who really cares about Edmonton and the people in it. She recently helped draft a letter to city councillors demanding city council divest from policing and invest in community. You can find the link to that letter in our show notes. Ray Akash, welcome to the show. So, how are y'all doing? Let's get a vibe check before we get into the
00:02:20
Speaker
into the brutal reality of policing on the prairies. Can we do like a weather check-in? I really like that one. Yes. What is, what can you see out your window now? What does your environment look like? Oh, I meant like a, I meant like a, what weather do you feel like? Is it cloudy? Ah, okay, okay. Is it raining? Okay, so what weather do you feel like, Rayakash?
00:02:49
Speaker
Um, I feel like it's a cloudy day, right? But there's, the sun is sort of shining through, but then you know how sometimes the clouds will cover the sun for a bit and then shit gets dark and you're like, oh, is the sun going to come back? I don't know. And then the sun does come out again. You're like, okay, great. And it goes back and forth. I think that's what I am right now.
00:03:14
Speaker
Oh, that's great. I've never done this before, so hopefully I sort of understand the point. I think I've been feeling, especially for the past, I don't know, like week or five days or however long, you know, right before there's a really huge thunderstorm and the air starts to really change and it gets really dark and you get that ozone smell and things start smelling really like fresh.
00:03:39
Speaker
And you're like, yeah, that pressure drop happens and you know that it's something big is coming. Um, and it's going to be really intense and it could get scary and you know, there could be damage done all over the place and you're, you're kind of worried about people who can't, you know, maybe make it to shelter, but at the same time, it's, it's like also very exciting time. Like you feel that sort of excitement in you that this, this big sort of weather change is coming. I think that's how I'm feeling.
00:04:09
Speaker
My parents live in southern Alberta and they're very windy down there. They're right next to a giant wind farm actually. And sometimes it gets so windy down there that you can like literally just like lean into the wind and it'll hold you up. I don't know if that really describes what I'm seeing, but that was the image that popped into my mind when you said this question.
00:04:34
Speaker
So now that the vibe check is over, we do have to do some context setting and scene setting for the subject today.
Community Experiences: Surveillance and Hostility
00:04:43
Speaker
And so my question, whoever wants to lead off, what is the reality on the ground for Black and Indigenous people in Edmonton and across Alberta when they encounter police?
00:04:55
Speaker
So, you know, I live in a neighborhood that's predominantly Black and Indigenous people and new migrants. Well, actually, I don't know, maybe not predominantly, but I think there's a high concentration of us here. That's part of the reason I love living in this neighborhood. But it's also, I would say, one of the most policed, if not most policed areas of the city.
00:05:19
Speaker
It's all day, every day. The big, the SUVs, the vans, cops on bikes, just up and down the streets, patrolling the alleyways, broad daylight for no reason, harassing people, ticketing people, riding their bikes, ticketing people for jaywalking, throwing people into the backs of their cars, booking people for all sorts of stuff.
00:05:45
Speaker
wandering in and out of community businesses.
00:05:50
Speaker
you know, and just generally, you know, I can't obviously speak for everybody here, but they are, you know, it feels like a hostile occupation, right? The helicopters flying overhead all day every day, you know, heavily, sometimes very heavily armed police officers, you know, just strolling through the neighborhood and the people they target. It's always very clear who it is. It's visibly
00:06:18
Speaker
Indigenous and Black people on these streets. And then, you know, you look at things like the, I think it's called the community safety map, I believe, where people can, you know, input where they feel unsafe, quote unquote, in the neighborhood.
00:06:34
Speaker
that you could drop a pin. Yes, I remember this, this whole show. Yeah. And you can just see, you can absolutely see, it's almost like a white supremacy map, right? It's like where, you know, where people are the most afraid, where they feel the most unsafe are, are in, you know, our neighborhoods, right? And it's, it's a cycle. It feels like this cycle, right? Where it just justifies more and more brutal policing and, you know, what,
00:06:58
Speaker
like who it is that we turn to when this happens. Whereas, you know, so it does, I think, you know, speaking from my perspective, like it really does seem to be sort of this, this hostile occupation that we're dealing with day in and day out. So full disclosure, I'm, as we spoke about earlier, I'm only recently back in town and was just in Ottawa finishing up my degree.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I think folks are feeling overwhelmed. I think folks are feeling frustrated.
00:07:37
Speaker
I think that there's a tension between the information that people have about the way that they're allowed to be treated and then the way that they're actually treated. I think most of what I'm hearing from my friends and family across Canada actually, especially before some of the protests and other resistance was more widespread, is
00:08:05
Speaker
just random folks outside on the street, white people policing and surveilling black and indigenous people. So even myself, I was out for a walk and was yelled at and told that I need to socially distance. I have friends whose kids have gotten $700 tickets because a white woman was scared that someone was out playing basketball by themselves.
00:08:33
Speaker
It's sort of these same stories over and over and over again that we're hearing. And as Molly mentioned, we know the groups of folks who are most likely to be targeted. We know the folks who are most visible, especially in a white supremacist state. So yeah, that's the reality.
00:08:55
Speaker
So, I mean, what's the purpose of the police, right? Like, why do we have this whole system? What is it there to do? The buzzword you hear is community safety, right? The police are the ones who keep us safe. But do police keep Black and Indigenous people safe? I mean, speaking from my own perspective growing up, I didn't, before I even understood what the police were, I knew that we weren't supposed to call them. I didn't, I wasn't told the whole story, but I
00:09:23
Speaker
I know that from a very young age, if there was an issue, then there was an uncle or auntie that you call, there's a friend that you call, but you don't call the police, it's not an option. And I think as I aged and started being exposed to the ways in which policing directly affected my community, I realized that they were not necessarily a place of solace.
00:09:49
Speaker
Um, and then in my own personal life, as I, as I've aged, I know that when I have reached out to the police, I've felt frustrated. Um, I felt overwhelmed. I felt overlooked, um, and have continued to just utilize the, the systems that I've always had, which is reaching out to the people that I care about and that I know. And so, um,
00:10:18
Speaker
I know that my own lived experience is a reflection of water community. We know that Regis, a young woman in Toronto, just lost her life. And her family was really convinced that it was the police that ended her life, that it was state violence that ended her life. And they were called because there was supposed to be a mental health crisis. There was a challenge with her and she just needed support.
00:10:48
Speaker
No, I wouldn't say that police are an institution that my community feels safe with, that my friends and family feel safe calling. Yeah, I would have to agree with you. Looking historically, policing on these lands has actually, the purpose is to police indigenous bodies in order to keep white people supposedly safe.
00:11:16
Speaker
You know, the history of policing on the prairies starts with the Northwest Mounted Police in the 1800s, which were formed in order to suppress Métis and First Nations rebellion, or I should say rebellion resistance to Canadian incursion onto our lands. And, you know, policing has continued that function ever since, policing and prisons both, right?
00:11:40
Speaker
police act as a way to contain and to discipline Indigenous people to keep us out of certain spaces and to keep us trapped in certain spaces as well, like prisons. You know, with the reserve pass system that used to be in place,
00:11:59
Speaker
you know, where First Nations people couldn't leave reserves without the express permission of the Indian agent, you know, incarceration rates for Indigenous people were extremely low, like one to two percent, and as soon as the past system got repealed and revoked, you start to see incarceration rates for Indigenous people climb and climb and climb, and they continue to climb. And so, you know, policing and prisons and the whole penal system really are, for Indigenous people,
00:12:29
Speaker
about maintaining certain levels of just like certain kinds of whiteness in spaces. Who are public spaces for? Who's considered the public, right? And I think both Black and Indigenous people, when it comes to
00:12:47
Speaker
who gets policed. I don't think we're really considered to be the public. When people talk about public safety or community safety, they're not talking about our safety, in my opinion. They're talking about the safety and comfort of the civil, well-meaning, middle-class white person.
00:13:06
Speaker
And that's, you know, that's who Canada is thinking about. That's who Alberta is thinking about. That's who Edmonton is thinking about when they can say things like, you know, street checks aren't racially motivated. For example, you know, in spite of the overwhelming statistics that say otherwise. Or, you know, certain murders aren't racially motivated, right? That's, you know, that's whiteness protecting itself.
00:13:33
Speaker
and police are sort of the the armed and licensed wing that does that work. Robin Maynard in her book Policing Black Lives does a really great overview talking about the history of policing black folks in North America and specifically in Canada and we know that the police were used as tools of the state to track down and
00:14:03
Speaker
capture black folks who were previously enslaved people and trying to reduce our freedom and ensure that we aren't able to thrive and grow. So I think that legacy is something that has continued into the present and that we're seeing play itself out every day. Yeah, like it's worth talking about the history. And thank you for bringing it up, Molly. Like, yeah, like the reason
00:14:31
Speaker
police on, on the prairies exist was to protect, you know, the private property of white people from indigenous people. And it really, when you look at the next 150 years of policing on the prairies from that kind of starting point, a lot of it starts to make sense. And yeah, I'm like, in 2020, you know, that I don't have to dig very far to find examples of police brutality, like,
00:15:00
Speaker
I have a pretty long list of examples I want to get into, but I don't know if either you, Rayakash or Molly have like a specific example you want to bring up, but like, so please jump in and interrupt me, but I'm on the email list for the ASERT, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. And this is the group that investigates essentially serious incidents that like, essentially when someone dies in the cops care or when the cops kill someone or there's someone who's
00:15:29
Speaker
uh, receives serious injuries. Acer comes in and investigates. And getting these emails is really depressing because a lot of them are like police acted reasonably in shooting a person or, uh, or it's like stuff that you've never heard of. Uh, which is like, here's an example that I literally just pulled from my email this morning. Uh, this happened on May 14th. So a few weeks ago, early in the morning on May 14th, police were dispatched to a 911 call on a possible assault on progress in West Edmonton.
00:15:57
Speaker
The caller to 911 reported hearing screaming and yelling coming from inside a suite. After what sounds like a struggle with tasers and batons were used on someone in the hallway, the man who the police were fighting went onto the balcony of the fourth floor suite and, quote, jumped or fell four stories to the ground below. Independent evidence, which would suggest that no officers were on the balcony at the time, unquote. That man eventually died from his injuries in hospital.
00:16:23
Speaker
And like, I don't know, do either of you remember hearing about this? This was literally like three weeks ago that like some man had jumped to his death in a confrontation with police.
00:16:34
Speaker
No, and I mean, that's really concerning, right? Is sort of the ways in which this kind of violence is invisibilized, right? And I don't know sort of what the channels are for making things like that public, but you wonder for every incident that you do hear about, how many are we not hearing about, right? I mean, it's not like the EPS or the RCMP are going to be telling us.
00:17:00
Speaker
Right. So, you know, just that, that complete lack of transparency is, is really disturbing. Yeah. Like again, because no one reported this to the media, because it didn't get out, the only reason it even got to me was because Acer started an investigation and they sent out an email. Right. Um, but I got another one on April 6th, uh, Calgary police went to a
Police and Mental Health: A Call for Change
00:17:21
Speaker
mental health call. And again, we're going to talk about this later in the pod, but police
00:17:24
Speaker
should not be doing mental health calls. We should have trained people who know what they're doing, handling people who are in mental distress. But after handcuffing this man who was going through some mental health distress and then carrying him into the ambulance, the medics found that he wasn't breathing. And that's what they say in the email. The medics found that he wasn't breathing. So between being cuffed and carried, this man stopped breathing. He was eventually pronounced dead at the hospital.
00:17:54
Speaker
Again, I don't remember hearing about this at all. Just like another dead person who was interacting with police. You don't get any information out of these emails either, just that someone after interacting with the police is now dead. Sometimes there's so little detail. There's even less detail in the one I'm going to do next, which is that
00:18:16
Speaker
On March 26th, the ASERT was directed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest of a 20-year-old man from the Sucker Creek First Nation who went into medical distress immediately following his arrest. Police responded to a disturbance complaint at a residence on the Sucker Creek First Nation. It was reported that an intoxicated person had damaged property and threatened an occupant of the house. The person who the police eventually arrested, there was a struggle that occurred and a taser was deployed.
00:18:45
Speaker
after being restrained and removed from the residence, the man went into medical distress. That's not explained what medical distress means or what happened to him, but it was so bad that an ambulance had to attend the scene and the man was transported to a nearby hospital. He eventually took an air ambulance to another hospital in another city, again, no details on which city where this is, where he remains in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery. I mean, I think the dude who was the subject of the medical distress should probably make a
00:19:13
Speaker
should probably be making that call rather than assert. But again, just no details on what's happened. Just medical distress. An indigenous man was arrested and he was hurt so bad that the air ambulance had to take him to a hospital in another city.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's interesting too, you know, and it's, you know, one of the things that I find so, you know, in spite of just the the horrors that have sort of engendered this, like the response and the fact that people are becoming more interested in
00:19:47
Speaker
defunding the police and our questioning, our reliance on, and the sort of normative allegiance that a lot of people have to the police is, you know, we need to start demanding more detail in this. We need to start demanding more detail from the officers when they're making the reporting. We need to start demanding more transparency. You know, and I say this like with the primary goal needs to be obviously defunding and dismantling policing.
00:20:15
Speaker
But we're taught to assume that whatever response the police make to whatever the situation is, they must have had a justified reason for it. We're supposed to rely on the police and we're supposed to trust that whatever it is that they're doing,
00:20:32
Speaker
you know they're doing you know with the best of intentions and with all this training behind them and you know as as just these upstanding keepers of the law or whatever it is right but you know when you start to do sort of these these close readings of these stories and you start to look at what the trends are you know the the situation is is much darker
00:20:52
Speaker
Um, and I think, you know, in the United States, that's, that's, I think becoming extremely obvious, you know, with the cops, just letting all of these white supremacist militias, you know, just run around, um, you know, like basically high five in them. Uh, but it's, you know, I think it's equally true up here and, and, you know, we can't have that Canadian exceptionalism anymore when we, when we're talking and thinking about the police. Yeah. I think, you know, speaking of institutions that are.
00:21:20
Speaker
dehumanizing but also sort of a mystery. I know that Molly you mentioned some of our prisons and we know that at least two people have died now in Canadian federal prisons because of COVID-19 and it was sort of this passive allowance of this death. We knew that
00:21:42
Speaker
And I have a couple of friends who are inside who feel like nobody cares about me. They don't care about my life. They don't care about my Black life. They're not even wearing masks. And so there's this active graphic and scary way in which agents of the state can inflict harm on Black and brown communities and otherwise marginalized communities. And then there is sort of covert
00:22:13
Speaker
passive, quote unquote, ways in which other institutions like the prison system invalidates, invisibilizes, and also ends the lives of the people that we love. This one just came out the other day. The incident itself is from 2018, but video of it just surfaced on Instagram and a story popped up in the Edmonton Journal from a reporter who tracked down the details of this case.
00:22:39
Speaker
But yes, video from 2018 surfaced of a black man in Edmonton being struck in the head and then restrained in a manner very similar to George Floyd with the cops essentially like leg and shin and the entire force of his body on his neck and throat. You know, this is you get into the details of this case and like the casual cruelty of the cops.
00:22:58
Speaker
that they dish out with no repercussions, just becomes extremely clear. The man's name was Jean-Claude Recundo, and all that he was guilty of doing was helping out his girlfriend at the time who had been involved in a car accident. I just have a quick excerpt from the story. Recundo, a construction worker and father of five, originally from Burundi, rushed to the accident near 121st Street and Yellowhead Trail after receiving a call from his partner.
00:23:24
Speaker
He and a friend arrived on scene where they were greeted by two helpful officers. Recundo's partner was upset and he helped with insurance information and paperwork while she calmed down. Eventually two other officers arrived. Recundo says he was on the phone with the insurance company when one of the newly arrived officers, who appeared to be upset, asked whether he was involved in the crash. Recundo said one of the officers then told him he had to leave the scene saying he would be arrested otherwise. Recundo said he explained he was helping his partner and assisting the other officers.
00:23:52
Speaker
When the officer insisted, Recundo said he relented and began to walk away. As he was leaving, however, Recundo said one of the officers, who was wearing a reflective vest in the video, grabbed his arm and pulled him to the ground. The 14-second clip taken by Recundo's friend shows part of the arrest. It shows Recundo prone on the grass with two officers on top of him. His hands are behind his back, two bystanders watch nearby. About two seconds in, the officer controlling the top half of Recundo's body brings his right shin across the side of Recundo's head.
00:24:21
Speaker
One of the officers says, stop resisting or you will get fucking tasered. The officer leaves his shin in place for the remainder of the video.
00:24:29
Speaker
That's the end of the quote from the story. Ricardo was eventually charged with obstructing and resisting police arrest, which is just a police favorite when they beat the shit out of you. But those charges were eventually dropped. The police professional standards branch conducted a fulsome investigation, which included interviews with witnesses and the officers. Ricardo, however, was not interviewed.
00:24:53
Speaker
The police spokeswoman attached to this said one of the officers was disciplined for the profanity used during the arrest. The details of that case, like, again, I don't know how you can read them and not be angry, right? And so how do we take that anger and kind of, you know, and the ongoing horror that is modern policing and move on to the solutions? How do we build a better system that
00:25:22
Speaker
not only doesn't hurt Black and Indigenous people, but creates a system where we all thrive.
Defunding Police: Support and Case Studies
00:25:28
Speaker
And there's a lot of options. There's a lot of ways we could go here. We could talk about defunding police, improving police oversight, carding, you know, land back, indigenous sovereignty. The defunding stuff is an easy place to begin, right? I think there is real momentum around this idea of defunding the cops. And like, I think, I think brutal austerity is something that Albertans are very familiar with, you know, thanks to years and years of conservative governments.
00:25:54
Speaker
But brutal austerity can be good when we apply that idea to cops. I know that one of the demands that people have been making the states around the George Floyd protest is defunding police. More and more people are saying it. More and more people are talking about it. Let's have the defunding police conversation. And if we are going to have that conversation,
00:26:17
Speaker
Let's know what we spend on it first. This is research that we just did. We just released a story on the police budgets of Edmonton and Calgary. But when you add up the police budgets of Edmonton Calgary together, they spend around, or they spend more than $750 million a year on policing in Alberta's two biggest cities. Does that dollar figure make sense, surprise you? I mean, it's huge. I mean, when you get into these large numbers, it's like incomprehensible, but like,
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah, 703 quarters of a billion dollars a year on policing in Alberta, just in the two big cities. I wish I could say that I was surprised, but I'm really not. I mentioned that police helicopter that's constantly flying over my part of town and how many thousands of dollars does it take to even just start one of those up, right? Much less run it for hours a day, which they do.
00:27:10
Speaker
You know, part of part of the way that this government has been running the show and previous governments for just about as long as I can remember is, you know, part of the way that you get austerity measures passed and you don't have people, you know, taking to the streets for teachers and for health care workers and, you know, other folks who are experiencing the brunt of this is, you know, you create these environments of fear. And one of the ways that you do that is by
00:27:40
Speaker
filling the city with cops and then acting like the reason that you're doing that is because these cops are needed, right? And I think, you know, you've seen it with COVID-19, right? They have nothing to do. And so they need to justify, you know, continuing to have jobs and to be paid their massive, like, incredibly bloated salaries. And so, you know, like, you have half a dozen armed, like, cops armed to the teeth.
00:28:10
Speaker
evicting a couple of young indigenous squatters from an unoccupied house, or well, I mean, they were occupying it, right? Or they just blow everything even more out of proportion, right? It's like you create these environments of fear, and then you create a solution for a problem that you caused. And I think that's part of the reason why we have these just
00:28:35
Speaker
absolute massive budgets right and and that sort of those environments of fear are not just around sort of what's happening in the city but then of course with you know indigenous land protector actions um you know anti tar sands anti pipeline organizing
00:28:51
Speaker
All of that, right, is you create these narratives where people fighting for their lives and wellbeing is a threat. And then the cops just slide right in there and get more and more and more money to hire more cops, to get more of their freakish dystopian toys that they then use on us, right? It's easy to justify an astronomical police budget when
00:29:20
Speaker
You framed certain folks as unsafe and you have positioned police as the only solution. So I think that like something that makes me feel excited because I think when I when I'm focusing on the brutality and the violence and just my loved ones being treated like garbage, it can make me feel
00:29:48
Speaker
Like there's nothing I can do. It can make me feel overwhelmed, especially someone who has been doing the work for like about a decade now. And, and, you know, Edmonton police, um, was just, just increased funding by like $75 million. Um, and EPS asked for 87 million, right? And there were folks who interjected and said, you know, I know Andrew Knack, uh, confronted some other folks, other city councilors and said, okay,
00:30:17
Speaker
you know, maybe we don't have to increase their budget by 25%. Maybe, you know, we can increase it just by 10%. And he faced like incredible backlash from all members of City Council, aside from about three. And I think if we talk about transformative justice, it makes it easier to understand
00:30:41
Speaker
what a world could look like without policing. And so for folks who maybe don't know about what transformative justice is, it's basically a practice of investing in other people's safety, investing in other people's success, and having people around you who have the tools and have the skills
00:31:02
Speaker
to intervene in potentially violent confrontations, interpersonal challenges that we're bound to have without necessarily needing to engage the police, engage systems of surveillance, and put ourselves in danger.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's the next question is like, okay, we defund the police. Then, then what do those, what do we do? How do we take care of each other? Right. And thinking about that is actually really fun. And, um, but, but I still think that there's a couple points worth talking about it when it comes to these budgets, right? Like budgets are ultimately moral documents. They demonstrate the priorities of a government or an organization far better than any fucking speech. Right.
00:31:49
Speaker
And if some politician says he really cares about the homeless, fucking prove it. Because right now the budget for addressing homelessness in Edmonton is fucking nothing. And instead $356 million a year, the single largest line item in the budget goes to policing, right? Like when you combine what the city spend, both Edmonton and Calgary,
00:32:13
Speaker
You combine their affordable housing, homelessness, and social programs budgets, and then you compare that to what they spend on policing. They spend more than nine times on policing than what they spend on housing the homeless and social programs. It can't be more clear, right? The priorities of our city governments are police is policing. It's the single largest line item.
00:32:37
Speaker
It makes me think of the ICE district. It makes me think of the fact that there was folks who were living downtown who had affordable housing and the city decided to prioritize like this giant arena space over people having a safe place to live. And then, I mean, as an insult to that injury,
00:32:59
Speaker
just like branded it the strange corporate like I strict district thing that didn't even, you know, even the yuppies in the community, even the young professionals were like, Oh, that doesn't have anything to do with me. I'm just so disconnected from the needs that folks have on the ground. Um, and I know that a number of activists and, and people in the community who really care were saying, okay, so you're going to displace all of these folks. What are you going to do for them? How are you going to support them?
00:33:27
Speaker
And I know that a few of my friends who were displaced, nothing was done for them. They had nowhere to go. Some of them had to live in really close quarters just to make it day by day. So I think when we look at what people say and then we look at what people do, we're going to have to pay a lot more attention to the actions that folks take.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the other thing that we've been seeing, you know, more and more, and you sort of mentioned the SROs, the School of Resource Officers, is that we're seeing the sort of
00:34:03
Speaker
like almost the police-ification of every aspect of public space and every aspect of our lives, right? You go into, you know, middle schools and there are armed police officers who are literally organizing stings against the students, you know, dragging them in, trying to get them to snitch on each other, you know, full view of a gun, not letting them talk to their parents, you know, ticketing them, you know, as Ray Cash mentioned with these huge fines,
00:34:30
Speaker
You know, you walk into the volunteer run community cafe on Alberta Avenue and you're going to sit down with a bunch of cops.
00:34:42
Speaker
And community leagues, which in at least my part of town are sort of this nest of racism, are putting up these moratoria on having more public housing in the neighborhoods, not letting more public housing be developed, but bringing in and welcoming more cops, getting the business associations involved to surveil and criminalize the neighborhood inhabitants. And then of course street checks, like the carding, you can't even walk down the street.
00:35:10
Speaker
Right? And, and we're, you know, up in, like, we're, I'm hoping that, you know, this is the start of a real sea change here, but, you know, this, this sort of creeping fascism that we've all been dealing with for so long, right? This, you know, you, you raise the police budget and you slash the public housing budget and you do that again and again, right? You raise the police budget and the province, like, fires thousands of teachers, right? Like,
00:35:36
Speaker
You know, the trends are there, right, right in front of us. And, you know, it's, it's fabulous to see people fighting back. And I think, you know, when Duncan, you were talking about sort of how exciting it is to think about alternatives to policing.
00:35:52
Speaker
One of the nice things about alternatives to policing is the institution of policing as it exists now is relatively new. And the extent of the influence that police and policing has over our lives right now is very new. And so the tools, the examples, the case studies, the programs, the types of relationships that we want to have with each other. Anyway, all those examples are there. We just need to go and reach for them and take them up.
00:36:18
Speaker
And, you know, the, like you said, right? Like we defund the police. That's, you know, just hundreds of millions of dollars that we can reinvest into our communities. And I know you're doing some organizing around this issue. Um, you've got a, can you tell us about that and like what you're asking, you know, city council and Edmonton to do?
00:36:45
Speaker
Sure, yeah. So there's an original letter that came out of Toronto that pulled from organizing in the States and ideas about how we can divest from policing without contributing to additional funding of the police because I know that sometimes we do this whole reform versus abolishing and there's that tension there because folks continue to
00:37:13
Speaker
I guess have hope that we can change the system. But anyways, the letter that we decided to draft was a reflection of the Toronto letter and it requests, asks, demands that our city councillors find, not even find ways actually, just defund and divest from police and transfer those funds into community organizations that we already know exist and we already know
00:37:42
Speaker
are doing incredible work. So as you mentioned, I'm hoping that you guys can link to the letter in the show notes. It's on the BLM YEG website and it's a super straightforward tool that you can use to just send a message to your local city councilor by putting in your postal code. And I really encourage people to read the letter first. I think sometimes when I looked at the numbers, I don't know what the numbers are at right now, but
00:38:09
Speaker
you know, within a few minutes, there's like 400 letters sent off. And a number of us took a lot of time to draft that letter. And, you know, folks like Molly took time to edit the letter and, and really add their thoughts. And there's a lot of education there too. So I encourage people to take the time and get that learning and then yes, take the action, hit the button, do the thing in addition.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, and then and then go from there, like, that is a that is the first step is to kind of one, like, let your elected representatives know that, you know, that policing is bullshit and that needs less money. But then two, it's like bringing the act of doing that, you know, brings people together, right. And now, you know, your group has a list of people who have clearly, you know, raised their hand and said, I am, you know, interested in learning more and working towards, you know, fixing this. Yeah, I mean, sorry. Go ahead.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think the challenge is that folks are ignited right now and folks are wanting to do good work and make a difference and feel like they're contributing to positive change. But we do have to remember that change takes a long time, takes a lot of effort, and community work isn't super smooth. It's not like
00:39:26
Speaker
happy and chill all the time. And there's challenging conversations that we have to have with one another and navigate with one another. And I really do hope that the people who are on fire right now are long term committed to the projects like this. Like, for example, after we send this letter to our city councilors, we also are going to have to follow up with them in person. We're also going to have to
00:39:50
Speaker
show up when the city council's having debates and offer our thoughts and continue pushing for where and in what quantities city council does invest that money in community and make sure that they continue investing that money. So yeah, it's a long game. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think, you know, I think that's the real danger, right? Is that, you know, people just, they sign the letter, they send it off.
00:40:18
Speaker
Uh, they don't take the time. I mean, you know, there's, there's an incredible resource list. Um, and like many resource lists at this point being spread around. Um, and for a lot of people, you know, this idea of a cab or this idea of defunding the police or that maybe police aren't, you know, the people we should be trusting to resolve all conflicts, right? This is a new idea for a lot of folks and it's amazing. It's amazing that people are taking up this idea, but it requires so much more.
00:40:42
Speaker
than just the riding this wave right now. And it's a great wave and I'm surfing hard, I'm loving it. This is the time to really take a deep dive here.
Community-Based Safety Alternatives
00:40:57
Speaker
And it's not only just how, all the things that Ray Cash said, like how do we follow up with our city councilors? How do we talk to the folks in the school board, the principals, the vice principals, getting schools to defund from SROs?
00:41:11
Speaker
continuing to fight against karting, but it's also about how do we reorient our own interpersonal relationships to be non-punitive? How do we stop relying on the police in our own lives in various ways? How do we stop if we see the police as a source of safety? How do you understand that that's not true?
00:41:33
Speaker
Reorient your own worldview to start living in ways that don't require the police, right? And these are those longer conversations. That's that grind, right? That's that heart that you know, those hard talks that you have, you know, staying up late at night, you know,
00:41:50
Speaker
reading, writing, being with your community, being with your family, in order to step into this future with no police. And I think, you know, that's sort of that, you know, it's exciting. All of it is so exciting, but it's also, you know, it is, it's going to be
00:42:10
Speaker
a slog and we're going to do it with each other and it's going to be, it's going to be good. Uh, but it's, you know, it's, it's going to be a lot more than just being horrified. It's what's happening and what's been happening. Yeah. I mean, if social change was easy, we'd be living in a way better world right now, but let's, let's, let's move on to the fun stuff. So if we're getting rid of cops, we're defunding cops, we're dismantling cops. If cops don't exist anymore, um, what comes in their place?
00:42:39
Speaker
know, if cops aren't responding to mental health emergencies, who is responding to mental health emergencies? Do we create a new class of job like a mental health first responder or something? Yeah, I mean, we have so many options and so many examples. I think that one of the faults of
00:43:02
Speaker
I mean, North America and the way that we set up our society is that we think macro before we think micro. So I think I would start with the micro and start with the fights that we have with our friends and our family and think about how we resolve those issues. And do we empathize with folks, try to see things from their perspective, put ourselves in their shoes? One thing that Miriam Kaba talks about is
00:43:31
Speaker
If there's someone in community who's done something wrong, right? And we want to help facilitate accountability. Do you push them out of community? Do you push them away or do you hold them closer so that you can actually be there for when maybe they're about to do that thing that they said they weren't going to do that was really harmful. And you can check in and say, Hey, how's it going? How, how are you managing your mental health? Are you fed? Are you housed? Um,
00:43:58
Speaker
I think we have to ask those questions about the ones we love because I think our society has made it really easy to just look out for me and maybe my partner and maybe my kid and maybe I'll check into my mom once in a while. When in reality, if we want to build this world where we care about each other and it's based on compassion, then we have to opt into each other's pain. We have to opt into each other's issues
00:44:26
Speaker
We have to actually be there and we have to reorganize the way that we prioritize our lives.
00:44:35
Speaker
Wow, yes to all of that, yeah. Just to add one thing to that, I think concomitantly, we need to start examining the ways in which we try to impose certain types of social normativity on people. And I mean, it's not just in terms of mental health, but ableism generally, and also obviously white supremacy, classism,
00:45:03
Speaker
you know, it's patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, all of those things, right? There are certain ways of being that are considered acceptable, right? Sort of the civil modes of behavior, the normative ways of speaking and acting in public. And I think, you know, one of the things that we really need to do is to
00:45:24
Speaker
expand our conception of what is okay to do and how it's okay to behave in public space because a lot of the time what I see is people getting authorities involved for people who are actually doing fine and they're not really bothering anybody but they're just acting kind of strange or they're having a rough time but they're not hurting themselves they're not hurting anybody else and then you bring in you know cops
00:45:51
Speaker
whether it's you know or peace officers or transit cops or security guards or whatever it is and they escalate the situation and they deteriorate the situation and so how is it that we make more space for one another to just be who we are and to have those moments that you know everybody has those moments where you know they're just they're having a hard they're having a rough time right um or you know you're
00:46:16
Speaker
whatever it may be, right? Like, how do we create space for one another to just be? You know, if you don't need intervention, right? Or if somebody doesn't need intervention, like, how do we have that, like, let's just let that person be in mind our own friggin' business, right? I mean, that sentiment, that ableism, that's what killed Abi Rahul and Abdi.
00:46:43
Speaker
He was hanging out, he was in public, he was doing things that made people feel uncomfortable, but he wasn't hurting anyone, right? And because folks called the police and people who were strangers to him escalated the situation, he died. So what makes more sense to me is like, okay, if I'm going through something, maybe I'm in public and I'm having a hard time,
00:47:11
Speaker
Why would you call a stranger to help me? Why wouldn't you call my mother? Why wouldn't you call my uncle or my cousin? Why wouldn't you call someone who is familiar to me, who can help calm me down, who can intervene in a way that's like reasonable and with care, and who's also probably familiar with another time that maybe I was having a hard time? Like that makes so much more sense to me.
00:47:34
Speaker
than us asking strangers who, on top of that, don't even have the training to deal with folks who are dealing with mental health crises to escape the situation and cause additional violence. I know you said it a micro versus macro, but I really do want to come back to the larger question of the jobs. If we're going to defund cops, what are the jobs that replace them? And there are almost 70,000 cops in Canada right now.
00:48:04
Speaker
you know, and if cops shouldn't be responding to mental health emergencies, or doing social work, or directing traffic, or investigating murders, or doing any of the other numerous things cops do, which they don't have to be doing, I really think that it's an opportunity for like organized labor to actually like, this is this is the good raid, this is this is good raiding, and it's a long term project, much like anything, that all the stuff that we're talking about to like, the cops and the police, the infrastructure around them, the PR infrastructure, they have the like,
00:48:34
Speaker
the way white majority society views them, they're incredibly powerful and they have this massive PR machine. But I really think it's I think it's an opportunity for organized labor to actually grow their movement and to have more dues paying members is to have like, you know, the jobs that I'm talking about, like people doing social work or mental health first responders or
00:48:54
Speaker
directing traffic, or whatever. Those are all good government union jobs. And I think, you know, that's it. That's the thing that a long term kind of narrative push within the labor movement that that I'm pushing. I know you've got a bit of experience in the labor movement, Ray cash, and I raise I talk to labor folks all the time and raise money from them for various projects. What are your thoughts on that?
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's super cool. I recently shared something on Twitter and it was just like at the end of it, sharing some images from Luna, an artist named Luna Sainte. And one of the examples, these infographics provided was like an example of someone who's driving and their brakes aren't working. And, you know, instead of the cops coming up and giving them a ticket and making them feel bad about themselves. And then actually they're like, still is broken and nothing has been solved.
00:49:48
Speaker
Um, she brings up an example of a city employee signals for you to pull over and asks whether or not they can replace your headlight. And so they're just, they do it right there. And then the person drives off and then they have a light now. Right. So like, yeah, that's a great job. This is someone who, um, has great interpersonal skills, someone who knows their way around cars. And if that job was additionally unionized.
00:50:15
Speaker
and secure, that's dope. That's the kind of world we're trying to imagine. So I love that idea. I'm on board.
00:50:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think, too, now is actually an excellent time for organized labor to really start mobilizing towards something like this, in part because you've got a massively increasing, already huge police budget. And we're in the middle of an economic recession, a massive economic recession. And I'm thinking too specifically about the oil patch. So you've got all of these often pretty young white men
00:50:52
Speaker
And the oil patch is a place that is just an absolute hotbed of misogyny and racism, ableism and all of that, who now are out of work. And to be a cop, you get what, like six months of training and you start with 67 grand a year.
00:51:13
Speaker
right? Like we need to be like funneling these guys into other types of work, right? And we need to be funneling, you know, the cut, like just, you know, I don't want to, all cops are bastards. So we need to be funneling these bastards into other types of work. And, you know, while I think it would be great if we could make every cop a good, competent, non-biased mental health professional, you know, I'm going to be honest, like a lot of these people probably shouldn't
00:51:42
Speaker
be working with the public. But there are other jobs. They shouldn't have guns, they shouldn't have guns, and they shouldn't be in any position of power over anyone else. Yeah, exactly. But that doesn't mean that there aren't jobs out there, right? And so I think it's not just about
00:51:57
Speaker
you know, obviously defunding the police, putting that money and putting some of that people power into other more generative community focused efforts 100%. But I think we also need to look at sort of the larger picture and think about to like, you know, diversifying the economy. For example, how do we how do we build, you know, like,
00:52:18
Speaker
a more diversified energy sector, for example, or how do we build, you know, more types of infrastructure and put more, like, create more jobs, you know, there, right? Because I think, you know, and defunding the policing and getting people into new jobs is great, but, you know, from everything
Rethinking Societal Conditioning and Public Safety
00:52:39
Speaker
that I've seen about police and policing, like, you're almost gonna have to
00:52:43
Speaker
do some like conditioning, like break down some conditioning, right? Because cops are trained to see Black and Indigenous people as enemies, right? Like I'll never forget, I think it was Saskatoon or Thunder Bay where they were using the image of an Indigenous woman for target practice, like the cops were, you know? And I was thinking about that when I heard that the Edmonton Police are asking for a third shooting range.
00:53:06
Speaker
And so part of the healing that's going to be happening is also going to be dismantling the white supremacist thinking that underlies how police do their jobs as individuals. And I think that's very, very doable. And for folks who are very set in their ways, I think there are ways of rendering them or putting them in places where they can't do that kind of harm that they currently can with the power that they have.
00:53:39
Speaker
Yeah, there's so, so much to talk about when it comes to this. And like, there are a whole bunch of other things that I wanted to talk about. I think you two might have to come back for a part two or a part three, because there's a whole bunch of stuff we're going to, we're leaving on the cutting room floor here, or at least the cutting room floor in my notes. And I do think we need to continue this conversation. So why don't we, I think we're going to have to wrap it up there, but is there any kind of like final thought or like final thing you want people to consider before we get into
00:54:07
Speaker
Um, kind of the calls to action at the end. Sure. Yeah. Um, I'm sure that your listeners are super well-learned and, and, and are well versed with these issues, but yes, they smell good too. And they're very good looking. Yeah. But I know just as a black woman who cares and has been a little visible in community, I'm getting a lot of messages from people saying like,
00:54:37
Speaker
What should I do? How do I learn? How do I do better? And all that stuff. And I think that's super cool. And I'm glad that, you know, your interest is piqued, but I just like to encourage some self learning. I'd like to encourage brainstorming, helpful Google terms. I'd like to encourage listening to podcasts like this one and other ones that have already produced a lot of helpful information instead of
00:55:05
Speaker
kind of burdening other folks of color who are probably either trying to heal, eat, or do the work.
00:55:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would also like to add that if you're, you're interested in either you're, you're already in the struggle or you're, you're interested in getting into the struggle. Um, let's fight to win. I think that, you know, with, with everything that's been going on in Alberta in the last several years, it's been feeling.
00:55:42
Speaker
You know, I know I've been feeling really demobilized for a while and I know a lot of other people have, but let's not forget that if we want to win, we need to fight like we can and we need to plan and we need to strategize and we need to use tactics that ensure that we can.
00:55:59
Speaker
Um, and so whether the struggle is, is defunding the police, um, or, you know, any, any of, sorry, I shouldn't say defunding the police is so intimately connected, I think with so many other things. Um, you know, let's, let's fight to win. Let's fight to create the kind of world where everybody can actually live and thrive together. Agreed. Let's do it.
00:56:29
Speaker
Okay. Well, thank you so much Molly and Ray cash for being on the show. And again, I am extending this invitation. Hopefully you're free next week. Um, so, uh, now is the time. Yeah. Calls to action. I know Ray cash you've got, uh, the letter tool. Can you give one more, one last plug for that? Sure. Yeah. It's super easy. It takes two minutes, maybe five minutes. If you take a minute to read it, which would be awesome. Um, you just log on to the link that's on the show notes and you'll
00:56:59
Speaker
have the opportunity to raise your voice and let city councillors know that folks in Edmonton really care about protecting Black and Indigenous and other racialized and marginalized lives. And the way to do that is by divesting from police and investing in community.
00:57:17
Speaker
Awesome. And Molly, we didn't even get a chance to talk about prison abolition or freelance free people, sorry. Can you give a plug for the work that you're doing as well as I think a fundraiser that you've got going on right now?
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah, so Freelance Free Peoples is a new anti-colonial abolition group on the prairies. So we're sort of just getting started. We want to do a lot of public education about prairie prison abolition. We also, since the sort of pandemic really got ramped up, we've been running a fundraiser that provides $250 stipends to people who are currently in prison or who have recently been released.
00:58:02
Speaker
You can find that, I believe that's going to be linked in the show notes as well, or you can Google Prairie Province Prisoner Support Fund. And that is open to anybody on the prairies who is currently incarcerated or recently released or the family or support people of people who are incarcerated.
00:58:23
Speaker
Awesome. Yes. Go give them money. It's very, very good group doing very good things. And thank you to our guests. Incredible guests, incredible conversation. I do want to continue this. I don't think this issue is going away.
00:58:35
Speaker
And if you like this podcast and you want to keep hearing more podcasts like this, there are a few things you can do to help us out. The easiest thing to do is to just share it with your friends, whether that's via email or text or through your social media channels or putting it on a tape and sending the tape in the mail to your friend. I don't care how you do it, but word of mouth is the best way to get the word out on stuff like this.
00:59:02
Speaker
The other big way that you can help us out is you can give us money. Again, this little independent media project is going with the help of around 250 people who regularly give us money every month. If you want to do that, if you have the ability to do that, you can go to the progressreport.ca slash patrons. You can put in your credit card.
00:59:19
Speaker
contribute $5, $10, $15 a month. It really goes a long way and we really do appreciate it. If you have any notes or thoughts or comments that you think I need to hear, you can reach me on Twitter. I'm on Twitter at Duncan Kinney and you can reach me on email by DuncanKAtProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communists for the amazing theme. Thank you so much to our guests, Rakesh Walters and Molly Swain. Thank you for listening and goodbye.
00:59:46
Speaker
Did you know that Progress Alberta is part of a national community of leftist podcasts on the Ricochet Podcast Network? You can find the Alberta Advantage, 49th Parahel, Kino Lefter, Well Reds, The Progress Report, Laffy Sales, Out of Left Field, and Unpacking the News, as well as a bunch of other awesome podcasts at Ricochet Media or wherever you download your podcasts.