Ettie Bailey-King’s Post

View profile for Ettie Bailey-King, graphic

Award-winning inclusive and accessible comms educator

Defund the police. If that sounds scary, or you think "but who will protect us from the bad guys", please know that abolition is not a naive statement or a wish to vanish all social structures overnight. Abolition means: • developing a wide range of appropriate social services to tackle social problems - and really tackle them, at the root cause level. • focusing on what actually makes communities safe. Police presence doesn't make communities safer. In fact, the most highly policed communities are usually the most violent. • Healthcare, housing, jobs, mental health support. We've let policing play the role of some of these services in recent years and in many countries, including the USA. When safe housing, jobs and healthcare is there, a lot of the symptoms that police try to tackle - don't necessarily disappear, but are greatly lessened and can be tackled more properly. • Policing is institutionally racist and sexist. No, I'm not saying that you're a bad person if you work for the police. That's not it at all. I repeat: I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm saying that the institution of policing is set up to prioritise the protection of private property, not to protect and care for Black and brown bodies, women, trans and gender non-conforming people. • Policing doesn't prevent violence. It enacts it. • Ta'Kiya Young should be alive today. She should be safely at home with her two children and one more on the way. • She should be living her life, and watching her children grow up. • If you're pro-policing, or you think we just need more body cams, more training on violence de-escalation, I totally get why you would be in favour of that. I can see that side of things. • But consider previous movements that tried to tweak this or that detail to make policing less deadly. Like the movement to ban chokeholds. It's tempting to think that this change or that change will stop Black and brown people from being disproportionately injured and killed by police forces. It won't. • The more I learn about policing, the more I discover that police don't protect us. (Again, if you work in the police please don't think I'm attacking you! I really don't think that you are a bad person, that you have set out to do any harm, or that you're not working your hardest to keep people safe. I'm talking about the institution and its overall impact.) If you're curious and want to learn more, I really recommend reading Derecka Purnell's phenomenal book "Abolition Now." In her extraordinary book, Purnell shows how she went on a journey from wanting to reform, to eventually defund and replace, policing as we know it. It's a life-changing book and I can't recommend it highly enough (especially if you're white or white passing). #RestInPower #BlackLivesMatter #SayHerName

View profile for Warren S., graphic

Award-winning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategist | Lawyer | Keynote Speaker | Anti-Racism | Anti-Oppression | Mental Health Advocate | LGBTQ+ | Director | Charity Trustee | Disabled (D/deaf)

Ta'Kiya Young should still be with us. 💔🖤 Body camera footage of Ohio police executing this pregnant, 21-year old Black woman has been released, showing how within 30 seconds of a demand to exit the vehicle, Ta'Kiya was publicly executed on 24 August by police officers sworn to "serve and protect". Defenceless, unarmed. Leaving a grocery store, stopped and accused of stealing alcohol. Shot in the car park, through the windshield of her car. This wouldn't have happened to a white woman. I'm not posting the footage - there are enough receipts to last all of our lifetimes. Here's a picture of Ta'Kiya instead. She had two young children at home and had been looking forward to welcoming her unborn baby girl in November. These are foreseeable consequences of white supremacist systems. The urgency of addressing our anti-Blackness and racist ideologies has never been more clear. The fact it keeps happening is suggestive, instead, of a system that is working exactly as intended. Ta'Kiya Young should still be with us. 💔🖤 #Justice4TaKiya #BlackLivesMatter [image description: a picture of a young, smiling Black woman named Ta'Kiya Young, alongside the words, "Say Her Name - Rest In Peace Ta'Kiya Young - Femicide is Genocide"]

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Ettie Bailey-King

Award-winning inclusive and accessible comms educator

1y

Sorry I meant to write “Becoming Abolitionists.” LI won’t let me edit my post. 

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Jörgen Kjellgren - Content Ops

Tools and processes for localization and content design. Founder at Hey Maker.

1y

Thank you for this Ettie Bailey-King can you help me understand this a little better, when people say defund the police, do they actually mean there should be no police or law enforcement institutions at all?

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Henry Rowling

Founder of Flying Cars Innovation | We help charity fundraisers build brilliant new campaigns that raise £millions 🌈

1y

The police are primarily there to protect state power and keep citizens in check. All over the world.

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Ben Luby

Content Designer at Deloitte, focusing on the fundamentals

1y

Thank you, Ettie. Another recommendation is ‘The End of Policing’ by Alex S Vitale.

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