The Defunding Violence Ordinance has been circulating in activist communities across the country. It continues to be a living document that both informs and is informed by grassroots efforts to defund and depower the institution of policing. Communities are using the Ordinance library as an organizing tool and a drafting template to run campaigns and bolster narratives about the insidiously harmful role of police. These campaigns range from eliminating school police officer contracts to prohibiting Deadly Exchange programs, to gradually downsizing police departments by not hiring replacements when officers quit, retire, or are fired.
The optional, customizable provisions in the Ordinance offer a range of proposed changes that vary in the magnitude of how much impact they would have towards reducing the violence inherent in policing. The unifying characteristic of each provision is that they are all abolitionist reforms, not performative solutions that ultimately legitimize and/or add power to the inherently oppressive institution of policing
Get in touch if you are working on or thinking of working on a campaign in your area to defund, depower or abolish your local police department!
