One Victory in a Long War

CEO of the Center for Policing Equity. We talked for half an hour about what can be done to radically transform policing, including his thoughts on calls to defund the police, which you will hear coming up in a few minutes. If the ten minutes I share with you today in form and inspire you, do consider supporting woke f Daily on Patreon to hear the full interview and so much more. You can become a patron right now at patreon dot

com slash woke Yeah. But for now, let's pick up on me asking Philip to share his thoughts on ending qualified immunity for police officers. Where are we with qualified immunity? Right? Where where are we with being able to at least get to some type of level playing ground where you don't have this get out of jail free card. Yeah, so unqualified immunity. There are states that are making changes.

They're saying they're abolishing it. That's not quite right. What they're doing is they're changing the standard for it, which should be useful on state cases and can be useful on local cases. But we're not close from any of the states. As examples, the Justice for Justice and Police saying George Floyd Act would end in this current iteration, would end qualified immunity, and I think that has a

shot of making it through the Senate. So in that case, we would be in fact revealing the precedent and saying, no, you cannot use it this way. But qualified immunity might might make a difference in about a quarter of the cases that come forward where they're charging. So even those things that are that are sort of easy villains in this fight, the real villain here is the way we

use police. So if most cities ninety six percent of what police do has nothing to do with violence, do you think we could figure out a way to spend less and get less armed response for that ninety six

percent of behavior. So I'd be happy toly qualified immunity in place if police had ninety six percent less contact with folks, Right, Like, if all I'm trying to do is reduce the number of bodies going to the morgu as a result of contact with the state, that seems like the bigger lever to pull is to pull police out of the places where, by the way, for the last quarter century they've been saying, we can't do this. You give us too much. We can't do mental health

and substance abuse and homelessness and child welfare. Why do you give all that to us? Right, So they want to get out of the business. They just want to do it without losing their budgets. Right, I'm happy to law enforcement to get them out of the places they always wanted to get out of. And in many cities, by the way, we should be standing up those systems before we're disinvesting, so we can invest before we divest

in some places. But it's got to be push pull, because we have fed this beast so much that if they were the military, US law enforcement would be the third largest military in the world after our military and then China's military. That's too much, which is obscene when you look at the lack of money we put into let's say education, right, like you judge a country by where they put the most of their resources, and like you said at the beginning, America is addicted right to

locking people up. And it's no wonder to me. I mean, we would rather in America send children to school with bulletproof backpacks, armed teachers, then do something substantive on gun reform. We'd rather have a Dante right a week or a day, then admit to the fact that our policing system is absolutely atrocious and if it didn't have a badge, would be considered the KKK in terms of the number of

black people that they murder on a regular basis. I just you know, what expectations do you have of this current administration to be able to move the ball forward with this systemic problem that we have. It will really depend to me on who they get through Senate confirmation. The Senate confirmed nominees right now are of fantastic slate of folks that are way bolder in terms of their vision for what can be done than this president campaigned on.

So we get Kristin Clark, and we get Venita Gupta, and we get Anne Milgram has had a DA that's good for the set of things I care about. Vinita Gupta was the best thing that had happened to the Civil Rights Division in at least a generation. And for her to come up and then have Kristin Clark take that over, I send it confirmed. I mean, it's not

just history setting. It sets a table for removal qualified immunity, for really ramping up what investigations look like a civil rights for expanding how civil rights investigations of law enforcement actually go into the full municipality. Right because before the Ferguson report, no one was talking about how cities generate revenue. So how much more can of folks who are really credential to have some experience? How much more could they do? And also I want us to be thinking about what

are we gonna make them do? Because under Obama, what we did was we said, there's a black dude there right plays basketball. We like his march madness, his wife is wonderful, his kids are wonderful. Let's not embarrass him. Let's not put him in bad spots, and so we didn't push. I'm not saying that's what I thought. I'm not saying this what everybody thought. No, no, no, But I mean, but that's right. But that's right. There's no

reason not to push Uncle Joe. There's just not. And so I want to say, what are we going to insist on? And I hope we insist on the recognition nationwide that we have a system that punishes people for the choices they make in a context where we have given them only terrible options. So we should be giving them better options before we even talk about how we

want to ratch it up punishment. Last question for you, fill Up is this, do you feel like we need to change our messaging around defund the lease, around abolish the police. Do you think that the messaging is off or do you think that it's right where it needs to be. So this conversation around messaging, I actually think it is super duper important because there's a lot of assumptions that have gone into it when we've had it

in public. So members of what i'll call a democratic establishment have said, well, we can't be making this defund demand. That's ridiculous it's killing us electorally, be like, you were not the one's making it. It wasn't for you. It was activating folks who were outraged and felt like what on earth can I do? Like you and I were saying and feeling at the very beginning of this conversation, and those folks are like, you know what, Yeah, I'm not up for reform, I'm up for just getting rid

of this because it's actually killing us. Yeah. So if folks want to have different messaging, feel free to develop some. That's how I feel about. It's like, so we all of us were not messaging the same thing. So I have a listeners talking about I want to talk about refund, not defund, refund to the community. I hear abolition is saying that, oh right, that feels good to me. But you know what, defund is still working in places. And

I also, I know you said last question. I'm gonna try not to be too profound, come on now, but my deal is we think of abolition right now like it's it's something brand new, okay. And then some folks are like, oh, Miriam Cobb has been around for a little while, Yes she has, she's been doing it and then some people are like, well, Angela Davis been around

for a little while. Okay, okay, okay. But Angela Davis, when she is summarizing a great portion of her life's work in two thousand and five, writes a book called Abolition Democracy. She is quoting from W. E. B. Du

Bois writing in nineteen thirty five about black reconstruction. This thing goes back to the point of emancipation, when we have black geniuses talking about not just the destruction of the systems that kill us, but the proactive, affirmative construction of systems that will keep us safe and the will rip body politic of the toxins of historical legacies of racism. Abolition is not just about getting rid of something. It's about standing up something that's better than what we've had.

And when we have a more historically literate appreciation for what that word means, I think it stops being so scary and starts being a bit inevitable. You know, you're so right on so many things. What makes me discourage, though, is that we're a nation that is illiterate about our own history, about our own lives, about the lives of our neighbors. We are purposefully ignorant. And so for every issue that we have, there is a re education that needs to happen, because the way that we have been

educated is through the lie. I keep saying that the big lie wasn't just about election fraud. The big lie has been what we've been teaching in public school since the beginning of time, right, And so it's just like, you know, you make sense if you were to take things into historical contests and actually understand the context of the words that we are using. But my fear for America is that we continually show our ass and our

celebratory around just how ignorant we are. And so if that be the case, Philip, it's like, do we ever see the needle move? Right? If we're in a constant state of having to go back and re educate folks and bring them up to where they should be, are we ever moving forward? If I got to keep looking back? Yeah, I understand the frustration. And so let's say there's two options. There's a yes and there's a no. If the answer is no, then what we're doing just give up? Right?

I should I should become a black person who says that black people just need to pull the pants up, and that will get all the shots are because there's money in that, for sure. Oh, I find your percent. You could be rich on Fox News go ahead if you didn't care about a conscience or yeah, like if I didn't have a soul, I could just do that.

And so I answer yes both because I see change happening and I watch the genius of communities coming together and saying we will demand better, we will insist on more, and because that is the only option that makes living the way that I'm trying to live makes sense, living with any kind of hope, looking at babies and saying not just I'm sorry for what we're giving you, but I think you can make this place better, literally looking at my god kids and saying that that it's required

for me to believe it can be and to work so that that's true. Yeah. Now, I believe that optimism in the face of reality is a revolutionary act, and I try and be a little bit of a revolutionary every day. Right, So I'm not trying to sugarcoat stuff. But if we're talking about is it possible, Slavery wasn't ended till it was right, Voting rights weren't secured until they were. Now they're not. We're gonna do it again, right, all the things that weren't possible. You think about it.

The moon was just something up in the sky for a long time throughout all of human history, and then a small group of folks got a bunch of resources and the will of the people to say, let's go. And now that's a thing that probably in the next twenty years you can buy a ticket to. You can buy a ticket to the moon. This thing that doesn't have oxygen doesn't exist within our earth. The things that humanity can do when we decide it is required are amazing.

We dream about technology, and we dream about power, But when do we dream about a better society? What does democracy look like twenty thirty forty one hundred, five hundred years from now? How have we set ourselves up to be better? When we start dreaming about freedom not just for ourselves, but as the the root construct of what we're going to gift to the next generation. I imagine that we can take ourselves to the Moon, to Mars, to solar systems we can't even see with the naked eye.

In terms of how we keep ourselves safe, I know that's possible, because humanity does the impossible all the goddamn time. It's just we've done it for the wrong reasons and for the wrong set of people. Optimism in the face of reality is a revolutionary act. Every week on Woke a f daily, I strive to leave my listeners with the message of hope and positivity so that we aren't

defeated by the fight in front of us. I hope you can let Phillips the words carry you forward, as the mere act of remaining optimistic in the face of our grim, oppressive reality is itself a sign of strength. But I also wanted to leave you this week with my own thoughts on the schaubun verdict and what this case says about the state of policing in America. Do

we need to defend? Do we need to abolish? Keep listening, friends, and hear my two cents, I thought to myself yesterday, as I know many people have, which is about Darnella Frasier. If not for Darnella Frasier's video, the seventeen year old now eighteen year old young woman who recorded George Floyd's death murder and uploaded it to social media, if it had not been for her her bravery, her courage, her quick thinking, recognizing that there wasn't much that she could do,

but she's sure as hell could record it. Listening to her break down on the stand about the apologies that she sends up in prayer to George Floyd that she didn't do enough. Yesterday, she did the most because for the first time in the history of that city, the history of that state, a white police officer was held accountable from murdering a black person in cold blood. Darnella Frasier's action did that. But what's worse, folks, is that

it shouldn't have had to. In too many instances, it doesn't matter whether or not we have cameras and have recorded because accountability is always elusive when it comes to black lives. Too many times we've been told that the homicides that we've seen or read about have been justifiable because they are at the hands of police officers. But what we know to be true, and what we need to remind ourselves of, is that Derek Chauvin is not

a bad apple. Derek Chauvin is the product of a poisoned orchard that spans the entirety of the United States. To dismiss the systemic violence that is prevalent in police departments across this country is to ignore the true problem in pursuit of a quick fix, which is to make Derek Chauvin an anomaly as opposed to a shift and necessary shift in policing. Now, I am of the mindset that policing in this country is too far broken for it to be quote unquote reformed. I believe that it

needs to be abolished. I believe that police need to be defunded the way that we have been defunding public education, our healthcare system, and social services across this country for decades, which is why police have become the catch all for things that society refuses to deal with that they have fucking caused. What I continue to say is that this country, everything that we are seeing unfold is purposeful. We're the

eleventh wealthiest nation in the world. We are also the leaders in incarceration, police killings, death by gun, and every other thing fucking wrong. Where are we exceptional, I guess for in our love of guns and our love of violence, in our love of trauma. Folks, I hope that you can find some solace in the outcome of this case.

But do remember that it took an international uprising activists in the streets, the courage and dedication of the Floyd family, the bravery of a seventeen year old black girl named Darnella Frasier, the bravery of the witnesses that took the stand to tell the truth about what they saw and who they were. Not an angry mob, as the defense would have had us believe, but a group of concerned citizens watching the life being squeezed out of one of

the their own. Take a deep sigh of relief that we as a collective can create the change that is necessary. But the amount of work that lies ahead of us to rid ourselves of the poisonous way policing exists in this country will take all of us. The most important thing I can say, and it's something I tell my listeners on almost a daily basis, is to take care of yourself. You don't have to watch every video or

follow every hashtag. We know what's going on in this country and we know what's going to take a lot of work to change things for the better. Do not give up, but that includes not giving up on yourself. As I always say, make sure you take breaks so that you don't have a breakdown. I hope this message carries you through until the next time you hear me, and as always, I do hope to see you over

on Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke AF. I'm working on even more ways to stay connected with the WOKEA family, and I would love, love love for you to join us on that journey. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.