Watching the Police
Minneapolis Defunds Its Police. Organizers Made It Happen.
The votes are in, the money is moving—and none of it would have been possible without grassroots activism.
“Watching the Police” is a new GEN column about the movement to rethink policing in America. Malaika Jabali will examine how plans to defund, abolish, or otherwise reform the police are playing out in cities and police departments across the country.
Shortly after midnight on December 10, the Minneapolis City Council voted to shift about $8 million in police funding to expand social services. It was, as far as the Minneapolis Police Department goes, a relatively innocuous monetary tweak: The overall police budget is still a staggering $179 million, and Minneapolis still ranks near the top of all major U.S. cities in per-capita police spending.
Yet for activists in the city, there was no downplaying what happened. “I think it’s a wonderful step in the right direction,” said Anwulika Okafor, member of Reclaim the Block, a local grassroots group focused on divesting from the police department. Sure, the city council’s actions fell well short of the “People’s Budget” that Reclaim the Block and its sister organization, Black Visions Collective, released in early…
