There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to allocate more resources to community health services rather than excessive funding for policing, advocating for community control over law enforcement.
Alicia Garza's quote addresses the critical need for a reevaluation of how societal resources are distributed, highlighting the imbalance between funding for police forces and community health services. It advocates for prioritizing the health and well-being of communities over punitive measures and emphasizes the necessity of community oversight in police actions to ensure that those entrusted with public safety are accountable and truly serve the interests of the communities they are meant to protect.
In practice
This quote can be referenced in discussions on police reform during community meetings.
Whether or not you call it Black Lives Matter, whether or not you put a hashtag in front of it, whether or not you call it the Movement for Black Lives, all of that is irrelevant. Because there was resistance before Black Lives Matter, and there will be resistance after Black Lives Matter.
What we've seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectives. We don't think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and make black lives matter.
I think that there are real concerns that we have around whose life is important and why. So if the official story is, for example, somebody was running from the police, does their life matter?
We need to make sure that we have an honest, honest conversation and that we engage honest practices around how racism operates in this country. It's not just about people being mean to each other.
Coming out of the 2016 election, there was a few things that became really clear. One, that black people deserve to have vehicles that represent the breadth of our interests. Two, that we really need to do a better job of being able to communicate what conditions and experiences our communities are facing.
As you keep pulling back the layers of how deeply rooted anti-blackness and white supremacy are in this country, it is exhausting, and it is traumatizing.
Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.
Feminists must denounce the use of white insecurity - whether in relation to white womanhood, white neighborhoods, white politics, or white wealth - to justify the brutal assaults against black people of all genders.
Things have become considerably better for men of colour since I was born. But I'd say that we'll be really getting somewhere when things get better for women of colour.
We're willing to spend countless dollars putting people who need help in cages, and then when they get out we say you can't have a job, and you can't have housing, and because you don't have either, we're going to take your kids, too.
The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism - the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success - actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration.
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