Tag: defund nypd

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MANYC Newsletter

How the NYC Budget Fails Us

Mutual aid is as important in this moment as it ever was.

Photo credit @freeblackradicals

Defund the NYPD & Occupy City Hall

Last week the New York City Council passed the 2021 fiscal year budget and failed to cut the NYPD budget by at least $1 billion, despite demands from New Yorkers. Instead, Mayor de Blasio allocated $5.22 billion to the NYPD, only about $382 million less than last year’s expense budget. This is a failure by the city’s government to show up for racial justice and be accountable to Black and Brown New Yorkers. Losses in the new budget include the firing of 2,800 teachers from CUNY, the removal of 21,000 affordable housing units, an 11% cut in arts spending, an 80% cut to NYC’s Summer Youth Employment Program, and more reductions to crucial public resources.  

Occupiers at City Hall are continuing their encampment, where volunteers and organizers are practicing true mutual aid and community—providing free meals, PPE, trainings, and various teach-ins on community needs, organizing, and Indigenous lands rights to protestors.

In a statement sent out on Wednesday, June 1st, Jawanza James Williams, an organizer for VOCAL-NY and Occupy City Hall, responded to the passing of the budget: 

After today, Black and Brown communities will bear the consequences of a budget that maintains police power in New York City, and underfunds long-neglected communities that have now also been hit hard by the coronavirus. Our elected leaders are to blame for that. But our movement has grown profoundly in the last weeks, and there’s no going back. New York City needs a radical financial and political shift to tackle the intersecting issues of poverty, public health, homelessness, and incarceration. This means reimagining what public safety means. It means identifying all the social problems that have long been policed rather than solved through community investments like permanent housing for the homeless or wrap-around harm reduction services for people who use drugs.

As one of the organizers of the City Hall encampment, I believe the most important outcome of all, is that millions more understand the abolition of police and prisons and reinvestment in our communities, as the only way to affirm that Black lives matter.

By passing this budget, our Mayor and City Council have made their lack of support for Black and Brown communities overwhelmingly clear. While a large majority of Council Members voted yes on the budget, 8 Council Members voted no as they believed the budget cuts were too high. Only 9 Council Members voted against the budget because the NYPD cuts weren’t enough. Find out how your Council Member voted and if they’re up for re-election.

Mutual aid is as important in this moment as it ever was. 

Mutual Aid NYC believes that mutual aid means long-term solidarity with the community, not a momentary act of charity, and we will continue to fight against the systems of oppression in NYC that prioritize profit over people. 

More Ways to Get Involved

In solidarity,
Mutual Aid NYC (MANYC)

We’re also looking for information on how we can support you. If you have feedback about the newsletter, please email us at manycnewsletter@gmail.com. 

You can also follow Mutual Aid NYC on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We encourage you to DM our accounts to have your content re-posted.

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Juneteenth, Defund, Reparations

A history of Juneteenth, Calls to Defund, and Reparations!

What is Juneteenth?

Juneteenth, sometimes known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, or Jubilee Day, celebrates the end of chattel slavery in this country.

On June 19, 1865 – two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation – Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas announced that the Civil War was over and the enslaved people of Texas were free. As the most remote of the slave states, with the fewest Union soldiers, Texas was the last Confederate state to free enslaved people. A few months later, the 13th Amendment was passed, and chattel slavery became illegal across the United States.

Serving as a day of remembrance for Black people  in Texas since 1866, Juneteenth began to be commemorated across the country in the 1970s. Join Black leaders in calling for Juneteenth to be a federal holiday in the United States. 

Calls to Action:

Sign Opal Lee’s petition to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Send emails to your Congressperson and to Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumerasking to make Juneteenth a holiday.

The History of Calls to “Defund” the Police

Activists have participated in large-scale organizing to defund and abolish police and prisons in the United States since as early as the 1940s. You can read about this history in this article in the Boston Review.

Calls for abolition re-emerged in force in the 1970s, and organizing efforts continued in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1976, Fay “Honey” Knopp published Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists and in 1983, Ruth Morris and others organized the International Conference on Penal Abolition. Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and other activists formed the group Critical Resistance in 1997. Gilmore, perhaps the foremost abolitionist scholar, describes much abolitionist work as “non-reformist reforms,” meaning reforms that build towards real change. Divesting in police and investing in communities is one such example.

Support Black-led organizations like Communities United for Police Reform, Critical Resistance, and the Movement for Black Lives in these calls to defund the police. Read organizer Mariame Kaba’s brilliant essay in the New York Times about police abolition or watch Kaba’s recent lecture outlining the goals of and steps toward abolition. And keep in mind that New York Police Department’s (NYPD’s) $6 billion budget is only half of the true cost to the city. New Yorkers spend another $5 billion a year on NYPD pensions and benefits, $600 million on NYPD building/vehicle maintenance, repairs, and associated debt, and $250 million on settlements and judgements for lawsuits against the NYPD. Learn about some of the proposals to reallocate this money here.

Calls to Action:

Calls for defunding and abolition are not simply calls for elimination or destruction. As Gilmore and other abolitionists point out, we must build anew. You can read here about the eight steps toward abolition, of which defunding the police is the first or check out Free Them All’s multi-step platform to defund the NYPD, including closing Rikers. We must begin to rethink the ways in which we address crime,focusing not on retribution and punishment, but on new forms of justice. And, we must not only redistribute funds on a local level, but on a state and federal level. We must invest in social services. And we must support reparations.

Demand Reparations Now

Support calls for reparations for the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. If you are a non-Black ally, we urge you to join us in commemorating Juneteenth this year by calling for reparations.

Reparations are a first step toward restitution for stolen lives, labor, knowledge, and skills, and for the continued systemic violence against and theft of land and property from Black people in the United States. Listen to this short piece on NPR exploring reparations.

We urge you to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “The Case for Reparations,” if you haven’t already.  And read about the Movement for Black Lives’ call for reparations.

Call to Action

Send emails to your Congressperson and to Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer demanding they support the House (H.R. 40) and Senate (S. 1083) bills to create a commission to study reparations.

In solidarity,
Mutual Aid NYC (MANYC)

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We’re also looking for information on how we can support you. If you have feedback about the newsletter, please email us at manycnewsletter@gmail.com. 

You can also follow Mutual Aid NYC on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We encourage you to DM our accounts to have your content re-posted.

If you liked this post from Mutual Aid NYC Newsletter, why not share it?

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The History of Mutual Aid + Ways to Keep Showing Up

MANYC Community,

This week, we are looking at the history of mutual aid to understand how we got to where we are today, as well as how to exist and thrive together in and beyond COVID-19. For many, this is the first time engaging in “mutual aid” efforts, but oppressed communities have relied on mutual aid for decades.  

Mutual aid continues to be an essential part of the fight for Black liberation.

Regan de Loggans, queer indigenous community organizer and agitator with the Indigenous Kinship Collective, writes,“Mutual Aid is a unifying term, putting a name to the practice that most of us (BIPOC) folx have been acting on all our lives.” 

Here’s how Regan de Loggans breaks it down in their mutual aid zine, which you can access here: 

Mutual aid is simple…

Mutual aid is anti-capitalist. It breaks “the binary of the ‘haves and have nots’ with the intention to re-allocate for equitable access to resources, education, and needs.” It puts control back in the hands of community members and “demands reciprocity and resource exchange.” 

Mutual aid is a non-Western tradition. It is “Indigenous lifeways and sovereignty; it is Black thrivance and power.” It is a practice that most people of color have been following for a long time, and predates colonialism and capitalism. People of color were (and still are) criminalized and strategically targeted for practicing mutual aid; in our current use of the practice, we must not erase that history. The co-option of mutual aid without accountability amounts to racism.

Mutual aid is about making a LONG-TERM commitment to the community. The reallocation of resources is important, de Loggans writes, but it “cannot be temporary. It must be carried into the world beyond times of panic, emergency, or pandemic.” 

Mutual aid is about solidarity, not charity. It is based on the premise that everyone in society has something to contribute, and should have equal agency regardless of their abilities or financial assets. “We ask for folx to skill-share as part of the practice,” de Loggans writes. “But we do not demand of them to contribute if they cannot in the moment, or force any ideologies of ‘owing’ someone or something. This is how we break ageist, ableist, labor hierarchy. No matter the age, no matter the ability, no matter the education, people can contribute.”

We at Mutual Aid NYC understand that aid must come with accountability. We are grateful to organizers like de Loggans who continue to pave the way. And, as a group based in NYC, we recognize that the city is built on stolen Lenape land.

More on the history of Mutual Aid:

  • Read
  • Listen
    • To an interview with organizer Mariame Kaba in which she calls for a “People’s Bailout to Confront Coronavirus.”

**If you find this zine useful and/or intend to share this information widely, we encourage you to donate to Regan and the Indigenous Kinship Collective for their labor via Venmo.**

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Keep following Black-led Calls to Action.

Just this week, New York State lawmakers voted to repeal 50-A, the privacy law that kept police disciplinary records sealed from the public for 44 years. This is a huge step forward in protecting Black communities from police brutality, and would not have happened without protests and activism of all kinds. It’s not the only win: Mayor de Blasio has committed to channeling money from the NYPD budget to youth and social services, and chokeholds have been criminalized. None of this is enough, but it shows that we have the attention of lawmakers and we must keep showing up.

If you want to participate in street actions:

Learn before you go. Show up prepared.

Defund the NYPD

Urge politicians to defund the NYPD. The NYPD budget has grown for 20 years, regardless of broader budget fluctuations. Our communities need more significant cuts than the 5% that the Comptroller and City Councilperson have suggested. This is funding badly needed by education, housing, and social services.

Talk to non-Black people you love about structural racism.

Some helpful compilations of resources:

Donate to NYC based bail and mutual aid funds.

In solidarity,
Mutual Aid NYC (MANYC)

We’re also looking for information on how we can support you. If you have feedback about the newsletter, please email us at manycnewsletter@gmail.com. 

You can also follow Mutual Aid NYC on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We encourage you to DM our accounts to have your content re-posted.

If you liked this post from Mutual Aid NYC Newsletter, why not share it?

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Urgent: Black-led Calls to Action

Dear MANYC Community:

Here are some urgent calls to action we are hearing from Black leadership across NYC. 

We share this info in the spirit of self-determination, and we encourage you to follow your conscience as you decide how you want to engage.  

Remember: There are many ways to be in the struggle beyond the streets, and the work we do to support Black neighbors via mutual aid is part of the long-term work of mending the damage of hundreds of years of oppression and building better structures for the future.

Defund NYPD + Repeal 50-A

Time-sensitive: Two decisions re: the police system are on the table in city budget conversations this week: 

  • NYC’s City Council is discussing next year’s NYPD budget
  • New York’s Legislature is considering repealing Section 50-A, known as the “Police Secrecy Law.” 

Right now, Mayor de Blasio has proposed a budget for 2021 that cutseducation, social services, and youth program funding, while keeping the NYPD fully funded at $6 billion dollars. 

There are many ways that the city can easily cut the NYPD budget and use those funds instead to support our communities. 

Reducing the NYPD budget by $1 billion – or about 17% – would provide necessary funds for food, housing, and social services. This is a direct link to MANYC’s work.

Take action: Make calls!

Take action: Share your testimonies!

  • Recall a troubling incident involving NYPD – whether you experienced it personally or heard from someone seeking support on the hotline.
  • Record a short video or audio clip (30 to 60 seconds) describing what happened.
  • Try to give context: Was a person of color, an immigrant, an undocumented person, or LGBTQ person involved?
  • Include whatever personal information you are comfortable with – such as your first name, organization you were representing at the time, the general location – without putting yourself or someone else at risk. 
  • Email the file to Leo Ferguson leo@jfrej.org at Jews For Racial and Economic Justice.

How to Participate in Street Actions:

Learn before you go. Show up prepared.

Safety for Street Actions

We thank you. We support you. Be safe out there.

Talk to non-Black people you love about structural racism.

Some helpful compilations of resources:

Donate

FTP

  • Donate to their bail fund here: @FTP4BAILFUND.

Thank you for doing your part to support our Black neighbors.

In solidarity, 
Mutual Aid NYC