I do listen to MPR quite a bit, usually while driving to and from work. And although I appreciate the news it shares and the National Public Radio (NPR) shows it airs, I always contemplate becoming a member for, like, two seconds before deciding no.
Why is this? Well, in my view, despite the good coverage in can and often does provide (see, for example, here), both MPR and NPR are just too supportive of the status quo. Media – be in print, broadcast, or online – should monitor and hold accountable centers of power, be they corporate or governmental. Neither NPR or MPR do this consistently enough, in my view, to warrant my financial support. As Kody Cava writes: “Like much other media, NPR [and by extension, I contend, MPR] has become a partisan news service with a sterile, professional tone that belies an underlying allegiance to a very narrow range of political viewpoints that are largely inoffensive to those in power.”
I’d rather financially support media outlets and programs that do consistently monitor and hold accountable those in power. The two that I’m currently supporting are the news and politics podcast Democracy Now! and the national progressive media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).
Now, some dismiss shows like Democracy Now! as “advocacy journalism.” But here’s the thing, all media advocate something. And if it’s not obvious what’s being advocated, then you can be sure it’s the status quo. I’d much rather listen to and support media that is unapologetically advocating for the monitoring and holding accountable of the various centers of power in our world then those that consciously or unconsciously parrot the official lines of governments, many of which are unduly influenced by corporate power. Sadly, one such government is that of the U.S.
The two guests on the February 1, 2023 Democracy Now! segment on abolishing the police were Andrea Ritchie (writer, lawyer, activist, and author of Invisible No More, a history of state violence against women of color, and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition with Mariame Kaba) and Justin Hansford (Howard University law professor and executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center). Following is part of what each they had to say.
[The abolition of police] would require a complete restructuring of the society that we live in, and it would require us to shift our priorities from responding to every form of need, conflict and harm with agents of violence and more and more policing and criminalization, and instead to address the root causes of the issues we face in our community, to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, to ensure that we all have the skills and commitment and ability to intervene in, prevent, deescalate and heal from harm, and that we have the resources we need to do that. And so, it does require a radical reimagination of what we understand safety to be and the means that we devote to achieving it.
And, you know, I think many things get named as “pie in the sky” and unattainable, but I think what’s really unrealistic is to continue to invest in a system that has proven over and over again that it not only does not prevent or intervene in or heal from violence, but actually perpetuates and perpetrates more and more violence. So, to me, that’s the unrealistic position, that we’re going to somehow continue to try and tweak policing as incidents like Tyre Nichols’ murder happen over and over again.
I’ve been in this since Rodney King was beaten in 1991, and I have seen nothing change – in fact, just a greater recognition that it doesn’t matter who the police officers are, it doesn’t matter where they live, it doesn’t matter what the policies are, it doesn’t matter how much oversight there is, it doesn’t matter how many prosecutions there are. We are going to continue to wake up, as we did the morning we learned of Tyre Nichols’ brutal murder, to stories like this, until we make those kinds of fundamental changes. And it can start with taking cops out of traffic stops or dismantling units like the ones that killed Tyre Nichols, but we can’t stop there. We have to actually reimagine a world where violence is not our response to every situation.
When I think of police abolition, and I think that “abolition” is the right word, I think about the abolitionists that we saw in the 19th century – Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass – and their work, which was our destiny as a people, to be free. And I think [today’s call for the abolition of police is] part of the same tradition. I think that it’s the same work. I think that the systems that we’re facing today are continuations of the systems that the abolitionists in the 19th century worked against. So, yes, I support that. I think that has to be the ultimate goal.
In terms of how quickly that happens and when that happens, that is something that is likely to be incremental – just like all big dreams, they don’t happen overnight – but something like traffic stops. I do want to say that it’s a conundrum in a way, because oftentimes, as I said before, if you look at the past reforms, like body cameras and other reforms that – you know, training, those reforms ultimately ended up at having us in this place today where we have over 1,100 killings in the past 12 months, Black people more likely to be killed – twice as likely to be killed as white people. So, actually, killings have increased, even with all this money given to police departments to do more trainings and to do more body cameras.
So, again, this type of reform, we have to be concerned about power shifting to these other government officers to conduct surveillance, to use more technology during these traffic stops. If they’re not police officers, that does not mean they’ll have the power to search. That does not mean that they’ll have weapons. That does not necessarily mean that they’ll be using cameras to conduct surveillance. So we have to be very careful with how the actual implementation of a reform like this takes place, because the devil is in the details. And that’s what we’ve seen over the past couple of years since the killing of George Floyd, really since the killing of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown. There have been responses that have taken place, but almost always, when we don’t keep our eye on the actual implementation of those responses, we actually end up in a worse place, because more money is put into these departments, and we get worse outcomes, under the heading of goodwill and reform.
For the complete February 1, 2023 Democracy Now! segment on the “Calls for No More Police,” click here.
Above: Moon Palace Books in south Minneapolis in the aftermath of the uprising in response to the police killing of George Flyod – May 31, 2020. For The Wild Reed’s coverage of these events, click here, here, here and here.
For theologian David Weiss’s series on “echoes of biblical themes” in the Abolish (or Defund) the Police movement, see:
Come This Wilderness – David Weiss (Full Frontal Faith, June 9, 2020).
Throwing Jesus Off a Cliff – On Abolition and the Gospel – David Weiss (Full Frontal Faith, June 30, 2020).
Follow the Drinking Gourd – David Weiss (Full Frontal Faith, July 4, 2020).
The Poor Will Be With You Always – David Weiss (Full Frontal Faith, July 8, 2020).
When Stones Shout – David Weiss (Full Frontal Faith, July 9, 2020).
From Mount Sinai to Minneapolis – David Weiss (Full Frontal Faith, July 12, 2020).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Remembering Philando Castile and Demanding Abolition of the System That Targets and Kills People of Color
• Nancy A. Heitzeg: Quote of the Day – March 31, 2016
• “An Abolitionist Demand”: Progressive Perspectives on Transforming Policing in the United States
• Something to Think About – July 21, 2020
• Hamilton Nolan: Quote of the Day – August 3, 2021
• Rashad Robinson: Quote of the Day – January 27, 2023
See also the previous chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Rallying in Solidarity with Eric Garner and Other Victims of Police Brutality
• In Minneapolis, Rallying in Solidarity with Black Lives in Baltimore
• “Say Her Name” Solidarity Action for Sandra Bland
• “We Are All One” – #Justice4Jamar and the 4th Precinct Occupation
• Something to Think About – March 25, 2016
• “This Doesn't Happen to White People”
• “I Can’t Breathe”: The Murder of George Floyd
• He Called Mama. He Has Called Up Great Power
• Honoring George Floyd
• “New and Very Dangerous”: The Extreme Right-Wing Infiltration of the George Floyd Protests
• Mayor Melvin Carter: “The Anger Is Real, and I Share It With You”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 2, 2020
• Trevor Noah on the “Dominoes of Racial Injustice”
• Emma Jordan-Simpson: “There Will Be No Peace Without Justice”
• Out and About – Spring 2020
• The Language of the Oppressor
• A Very Intentional First Day of the Year
• The Problem Is Ultimately Bigger Than Individuals. It’s Systemic
• Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: “We Need to Make Systemic Changes”
• “Let This Be a Turning Point”
• “And Still and All, It Continues”
• Remembering George Floyd on the First Anniversary of His Murder
• “This Has Got to Stop”
• Under Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, “More Negligence and Suffering”
• Love, Justice, and Amir Locke
• Remembering Tekle Sundberg: “He Deserved to Live; He Deserved a Chance to Heal”
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Now Here’s a Voice I’d Like to Hear Regularly on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows
• Bernie Sanders and the Corporate Media
• The Exception to the Rulers
• Amy Goodman and the “Sacred Responsibility” of Listening
• John Atcheson: Quote of the Day – October 17, 2019
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