This panel was absolutely outstanding. All star line up of @Reakash, @Pam_Palmater, El Jones, @mmeenaakshii, and Latoya Farrell.

Thread below highlights the many brilliant insights shared during the discussion. These are the conversations we need to be having in Canada. https://twitter.com/bccla/status/1299089358746722309

El Jones: Policing is "engrained" in our society and is not just "officers on the street", but in immigration, education, health care, & social work; how "anti-Blackness operates in all facets of Canada" and in particular the hypersexualization of Black women, discrediting them.

El Jones: Our push to defund police cannot simply replace police with social work. Functionally, "social workers are police as well," which must be accounted for in how we rethink public safety. Likewise, medical staff are "deeply implicated in the violence of the state."

El Jones: "The state does not do its violence in one site." We see health demanding policing (eg security), and policing claiming to do health. These "linguistic shifts" matter. Who we label "frontline workers" implicates "dangerous slippage that hides the violence being done."

El Jones: A lot of colonialism is rooted in ideas of "hygiene". This manifests in "covid policing". The cases of covid policing were all Black people. The African as the "outside immigrant" is tied to the "policing of Black bodies." These systems are "firing together."

El Jones: Activists sought to ban street checks, and then the state defined checks narrowly to preserve racial profiling, which is the pernicious force this activism actually sought to challenge. Anti-policing activism is being co-opted by neo-liberal initiatives.

@Pam_Palmater: "Policing is not just *officers*, it is the *state*." We move through cycles of inquiries and investigations with limited impact. The status quo just reinforces and protects itself. All of the concerns we have about police keep getting worse.

@Pam_Palmater: "Activism" can be corporatized and co-opted. Things are not going wrong. Police forces were "literally created under a white nationalist framework that was highly racialized and trained to respond to every situation with violence and suppression."

@Pam_Palmater: Long history of the RCMP in taking "a lead role in the genocide and oppression of Indigenous Peoples." This violence is not "historical". The RCMP still polices Indigenous rights in terms of hunting, fishing, gethering, and trading.

@Pam_Palmater: Worse is how they collaborate with other state departments and even private corporations to participate in surveillance of Indigenous Peoples. This is all "very racialized, hyperracialized" against Indigenous Peoples.

@Pam_Palmater: If we are impoverished, even our poverty is criminalized: "We aren't allowed to exist either way, we aren't allowed to take care of ourselves, and we aren't not allowed to take care of ourselves." Not just the RCMP, they are one example of "lethal police forces."

@Pam_Palmater: People are routinely surprised about the idea of racist policing in Canada. "Countless amount of evidence and legal review and research ... to say we've got a problem with policing. It's racist, it's violent, and they don't even protect Indigenous Peoples."

@Pam_Palmater: Bad apples are a "myth". There is "widespread racism ... If the RCMP as an institution is racist and sexually violent and corrupt, then what chance do people like Black women, like Indigenous women, have when it comes to the RCMP?"

@Pam_Palmater: The RCMP is "more concerned about all of these class actions and the money they will have to pay out then they are addressing the perpetrators in the RCMP." This is why we must go beyond modest reforms. We are talking about "widespread corruption".

@Pam_Palmater: The Commissioner denies systemic racism in the RCMP. The APTN just came out with another expose identifying hundreds of RCMP officers saying racist things. There are not a few bad apples. This is widespread.

@Pam_Palmater: "Racism and violence against Indigenous Peoples is so engrained in the RCMP that they don't even see it as a problem." They overincarcerate. They take our children. "At the end of the day there won't be any Indigenous people left." We must confront corporatization.

@Reakash: "I'm wary of the professionalization of activism." Interested in how to protect people from harm, without putting marginalized people in cages. First, "the police do not keep us safe." The "racialization of crime" has consistently put Black people in danger.

@Reakash: Stereoypes about Black men creates increased monitoring of inherently black men. Stereotypes of Black women and children creates expose them to violence and police brutality. "The state does not even afford Black children the luxury of childhood."

@Reakash: Encourage everyone to read Fatouma's story (here: https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/there-was-no-care/). We must upend the belief that state actors make decisions in the best interests of Black children and Black families. There are so many lives that have been taken by police.

@Reakash: We can find alternative ways for safety without calling the police. One is "transformative justice", a political framework that helps us to respond to violence without creating more violence by calling the police. It is about "creating justice together."

@Reakash: Tenets: (1) no reliance on state (police, social work); (2) no violence (vigilantaism); (3) actively cultivate what prevents violence (housing, healing, therapy, accountability). See article: We don't need the police, we need each other ( https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/06/we-dont-need-police-we-need-each-other).

@Reakash: "Ultimately transformative justice requires to step out of our busy lives ... to invest daily into cultivating safety and security for everyone around us. It reminds us that the revolution starts at home" (recommended book: https://www.akpress.org/revolutionstartsathome.html).

@Reakash: E.g. the "Bear Clan Patrol". Volunteers who intervene in situations of harm and neglect, and to offer care and whatever folks need. An incredible example of shifting away from judgment and fear, and towards care and compassion.

@Reakash: TJ asks: "What tools and skills do we need to keep our communities safe without intervention"? One example: de-escalation training for community members. Then we can resolve internal disputes without calling violent state actors.

@Reakash: Check out creative interventions org and http://www.stopviolenceeveryday.org/ .

@mmeenaakshii: "As long as police and RCMP exist to enforce settler colonialism Indigenous resistance will continue to flourish." The backgrop to the early work of @pivotlegal was the police being "of no use to communities in crisis."

@mmeenaakshii: Pivot collecting 50 affidavits confirming police brutality. Ultimately, the investigator found none of the reports substantiated. This work demands creativity" i.e. "community self-defence". The resources for holding police accountable are too few and far between.

@mmeenaakshii: We make a number of recommendations: (1) legal aid tarif for pursuing complaints; (2) invest in survivors; (3) funding police complaints clinics. We have witnessed the "failures of reform". Reform efforts "infect our movements and deplete our energy."

@mmeenaakshii: Non-profits have at times contributed to these problematic reforms. "We cannot seperate reforms for those who have advocated for them", i.e., cis white settler liberal leadership. This has informed how reforms have been carried out.

@mmeenaakshii: Some of these reforms save lives; Some have made lives more bearable; But they ultimately fall short. It's a good thing to call others into the conversation, but hold them accountable. When we say defund, we mean abolish. "We mean defund to zero."

@mmeenaakshii: "I cannot understate how harmful and dangerous it is to fall into patterns of reform" e.g. body cams, Portugal model, better training. If we actually brought together a group who understood societal hierarchy, "they wouldn't want to be police."

@mmeenaakshii: What do we replace police with? E.g., Bear Clan Patrol. But rather than assume we replace police with a monolith, let's listen to the individuals who have never been protected by police. In the absence of police safety, these communities made their own.

@mmeenaakshii: Some demands: (1) repeal CDSA; (2) void all charges and criminal records under it; (3) defund police and use that money to give reparations to victims of the war on drugs. Don't need monoliths solutions; listen to the abolitionists in our midst.

@mmeenaakshii: Calls to Action: (1) support local actions to defund police; (2) support local mutual aid projects led by Black and Inidgenous folks; (3) uplift the good work by doing the folks on this call.

Q&A Period:

Latoya asks: What does it mean to defund the police? And what are important considerations to keep in mind when advocating for this structural change?

El Jones: Defunding means abolition. This is an example of neoliberal language creep. End "policing functions".

El Jones: Concern - shifting "police" budgets to "safety" budgets that still perform police punishment. Police abolition is about abolishing police ideology. This is part of a "punishment regime." "Abolishing requires us to rethink our relationship with land, food, prisons."

El Jones: "You can't abolish and have transphobia. You can't abolish and have homophobia ... It means saying where our will to punish comes from. Where the cop comes from in our heart and in our head." Otherwise, "we will just become cops ourselves."

El Jones: Defunding is about priorities. We build giant universities. But don't provide clean water to reserves. We have to talk about capitalism. Where resources come from. Moving away from punishment.

@Pam_Palmater: "Everything that El says just reinforces that the status quo here especially around supremacy and racism and economic divisions will protect and reinforce itself at all costs and in the most unique and imaginative ways."

@Pam_Palmater: This explains why police defunding is responded to with diversity hiring and cultural awareness training--i.e., *more* money for policing, not *less*. The call to defund is repackaged as more funding for the police--a "cementing of police in society."

@Pam_Palmater: Crime rates have been decreasing constantly, yet costs for police have been increasing. They want to collect race-based data on crime, not of the victims, but of crime created by police, insidiously, to justify both more policing and more racist policing.

@Pam_Palmater: Across the United States, these are police riots to maintain their power and their lack of accountability. This is at the heart of defunding. We have to think carefully about the solutions we propose. We must *challenge* status quo policing, not *cement* it.

Question from audience: Does adding diversity to existing systems create change?

@mmeenaakshii: "No." Part of the logic of reform. "Different faces in high places" does not really alter these systems, where hierarchy has been "baked in" to their "essence."

@mmeenaakshii: Interrogate people's motivations in rising to the power. People in the comments are saying "El Jones for Prime Minister". We don't want that. We don't want Canada. Some describe the BC gov't as progressive, but 200 people are dying from opioid overdoses monthly.

@mmeenaakshii: "I see the power in the streets, not the boardrooms."

@Reakash: I'm concerned when people want power. Why do they want that power? Thought there are some interesting examples for people who have used those positions strategically, to scheme for progress.

@Reakash: By being strategic we can elect progressive people. But these examples are few and far between, and these people are often coopted by power. "Black billionaires don't help me."

Question from audience: How do we replace police?

@mmeenaakshii: We need to move away from this notion of monolithic replacements. Adopt a disaggregated lens. Stop the CDSA. Stop displacing people through municipal bylaws. We can immediately curb existing pernicious powers.

El Jones: We should discuss "everyday abolition". E.g. @Reakash discussed many current initiatives that are "part of an abolition understanding." Same with @mmeenaakshii, centreing the survivors of the drug war. We can get ready by doing small things everyday.

El Jones: I'm guility of not fulfilling everyday abolition. We all need to do this in our workplaces, our unions, our relationships, our families. "Everyone can be an activist, but not everything is activism." We all have a duty to each other.

@Pam_Palmater: We have to get away from the government rhetoric that it took 500 years to do this damage so it will take another 500 years to do justice. That is horrific. "We know for a fact that we could take immediate, radical, substantive change today."