Over the years our Oakland chapter has periodically researched and developed mid-year or annual reviews of policing as a way to report developments in Oakland’s use of policing and assess key opportunities for resistance and organizing for prison industrial complex abolition.
In Oakland, the police department’s $300 million budget engulfs over 40% of Oakland’s general purpose fund. Our commitment to PIC abolition necessitates that we fight for complete divestment from policing departments, agencies and programs as a strategy to ensure the abolition of policing within our lifetimes. With this goal in mind, Critical Resistance is in support of the Anti-Police Terror Projects’s campaign to Defund the Oakland Police Department (OPD) by 50%, which amounts to roughly 150 million dollars. We know that policing, imprisonment, and surveillance do not keep us safe, and yet these forces hold the majority of our 2019 – 2021 General Fund budget in Oakland. All the while our healthcare system, public schools and youth programs, affordable housing, and public transportation suffer.
In our report, you can see clearly the City of Oakland’s prioritization of repression, property protection, and police terror over our people’s safety and livelihood as housing and community development received 0.0% funding, compared to 44% spent on the policing of our communities.
Read the full report here and share our Mid-Year Policing Review tiles on social media:
Two New Videos on Policing and Abolition
With an awareness that new folks are becoming radicalized towards PIC abolition and compelled to action in this moment, the Anti-Policing Working Group within our Oakland chapter have created the following videos to serve as a starting point in understanding the historical roots and urgency of police abolition.
How do we abolish police?
What is “true justice”?