PHOTOS: Rally to Defund Police Held at Providence's Burnside Park

PHOTOS: Rally to Defund Police Held at Providence's Burnside Park

Demonstrators gathered on Wednesday at Burnside Park in Providence to support proposals being pushed by Providence City Council members Rachel Miller (Ward13) and Katherine Kerwin (Ward12) to defund and dismantle the Providence Police. 

The "Defund Police" movement has picked up support around the country and the City Council of Minneapolis has announced that they have the votes to close down the existing police structure. Minneapolis has a population of 425,000.

During the City Council Finance Committee meeting on Wednesday night which began after the protest, Alexis Morales of DARE’s Behind the Walls Committee spoke about his experience with police brutality.

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“We need to defund the police and we need directly-impacted folks in charge of re-allocating that money. Defunding the police is just the start,” said Morales.

The groups that organized the demonstration said "we are calling for decreased funding for the police budget overall - we are not in support of funding additional body cams, training, or community policing."

Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), the Formerly Incarcerated Union (FIU), the Alliance to Mobilize our Resistance (AMOR), Black and Pink Providence, and Never Again Action Rhode Island organized Wednesday's demonstration.

Vanessa Flores-Maldonado of PrYSM said, “Defund the police means abolish the police. Defunding the police will happen, and we as the community want to help with this process.”

Charlotte Abotsi, a lifelong resident of Providence, said, “You defund social services all the time. You defund schools. You defund hospitals, community health centers, programs for low-income communities all the time. You are experts at defunding. When we say Defund The Police we mean Fund Our Futures. Fund community wellness. Fund young futures. Fund our schools.”

She added, “Our collective goal should be the elimination for the need for police, in totality, and the abolition of the prison system. While we work to do this, we create lasting alternatives to punishment and incarceration, which we know, by our own 13th amendment is modern-day slavery. That should be a collective goal. It should not be controversial in the slightest means. Remember, abolishing slavery was once an extremely controversial and unthinkable idea. It’s not about a few bad apples… the police are the problem. The system itself is riddled with sickness. The apples are all bad, because the system is bad.”

Trina Powers and Douglas Rodgers, members of Black and Pink Providence, an organization advocating for LGBTQ individuals who are affected by the criminal-legal system, specified particular budget items that they would like to see cut. “Policing makes everybody in our communities less safe; people of color and LGBTQ people are disproportionately impacted, as is detailed in B&P National’s 2015 report Coming Out of Concrete Closets. 

The groups are calling for:

- An overall decrease (not just reallocation) in police budget; especially the personnel line items (103, 112, 121, 122, 125)
- Freeze hiring of new cops (line item 112) and increases to benefits (line item 104)
- Remove police from Providence public schools
- Take action now to defund, disarm, and ultimately disband and abolish the police
- In place of the police budget: increase investment in community resources such as education, comprehensive healthcare, public and affordable housing, dictated by Providence community organizations and those most directly impacted by mass criminalization 
- invest in reentry resources that are nor administered by the Police or DOC but are created by and for formerly incarcerated people, community outreach and harm reduction professionals.