A black mother Contemplates what it means to Defund the Police Shannon Gibney
I remember once, many years ago, watching a boyfriend run down a dimly lit street in downtown Minneapolis, a small package under his arm for the FedEx office on the next block. I sat in the car watching and waiting for him, unprepared for the sudden rigidity of my spine, the hole in my stomach. My eyes peered anxiously at the passersby he raced past, waiting for someone - a white woman in a suit and heels, a cop coming out of the corner store - to grab him or knock him down suddenly, unhinged by the spectacle of his freely moving body. I hadn’t known until that exact moment what it meant to love a body that the politic built a nation around controlling and, in fact, destroying. These days, loving my Black tween son, I have a new and constant intimacy with the experience. As we settle into the era of post-George Floyd, post- protest, hundreds of institutional commitments to “anti- racist” initiatives, defunding the police movements and their inevitable backlash, rising crime rates, and incremental policy change to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), I look at my son, an affectionate, funny, caring, deeply engaged 10 year old, and I wonder what his choices will be to push toward change.
Of course, I also wonder about the costs.
Boisey wants to be involved; I have raised him that way and that is who he is anyway. But as an adult, a student of history and a Black citizen myself, I know all too well how white people and white institutions so often plant the burden of social change on the backs of the most vulnerable. You push for the change that everyone says must happen, that everyone says they want, and in doing so, you become “The Problem” in the organization, the school, the community. Having been “The Problem” my whole life, I want more for Boisey. And yet, I know that nothing changes unless people change it. And the people who usually have to make it happen are those who are most at risk from the system. It’s a conundrum I haven’t worked out in my mind or heart. No Black parent has.
And yet, here we are.
The Minneapolis City Council recently voted to cut the MPD budget for the first time in 20 years. This $8 million will fund a new mobile mental health team, community- based violence prevention programs, and move property damage and parking calls into other City departments. But it was a battle, even for these small victories. The number of police officers was not cut, despite pressure, and the establishment mayor threatened to veto the whole budget. The MPD still has a $171 total budget, and little-to-no accountability measures in place.
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