Speaker 1: Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to WOKF
Speaker 1: Daily filmmaker and activist Matthew Solomon, who we spoke to
Speaker 1: last year about your documentary, Matthew Reimagining Safety all around
Speaker 1: kind of policing and police reform. Give our audience a
Speaker 1: refresher around the importance and significance of your documentary, which
Speaker 1: was just recently being shown at a film festival in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Because while we have just acknowledged the recent
Speaker 1: anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, what we know
Speaker 1: is that unfortunately, at least in my opinion and I'd
Speaker 1: like yours, that not a lot has changed. Police killings
Speaker 1: continue you to be at an all time high. So
Speaker 1: please talk to us about your film and why it's
Speaker 1: particularly significant still in this moment that we're in.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, thank you, Danielle, and thank you for having
Speaker 2: me back on. I'm glad to be back so Reimagining
Speaker 2: Safety I have been you know, I'm a filmmaker. I
Speaker 2: also work in conflict resolution, and prior to the pandemic
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, I was traveling and doing a lot
Speaker 2: of facilitation for a conflict resolution and when the pandemic
Speaker 2: started and we couldn't go anywhere. I decided to go
Speaker 2: back to school, and so I wanted to a master's
Speaker 2: program in public administration, hoping to be able to use
Speaker 2: my privilege and access as a white male to be
Speaker 2: able to help support social change. And this is you know,
Speaker 2: COVID the murder of George Floyd, as you mentioned after
Speaker 2: you know, at that point almost a decade of Black
Speaker 2: Lives Matter and that movement, after treyvon Martin was murdered.
Speaker 2: It's also we just passed the tenure anniversary of Mike
Speaker 2: Brown being murdered. And so you know, I grew up
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles and I was in college at USC
Speaker 2: when the LA riots happened. So you know, I've had
Speaker 2: decades where you know, it's like, wow, we're still doing this.
Speaker 2: It's not getting better, it's getting worse. And you know,
Speaker 2: even last year was the deadliest year for police murdering people.
Speaker 2: Over thirteen hundred people were killed by police in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, and so you know, all of this has
Speaker 2: continued to happen despite calls for like, quote reform and
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. And so you know, I'm in
Speaker 2: my master's program and I'm applying all of the coursework
Speaker 2: around sustainability and community and transformative leadership and funding and
Speaker 2: all of those things to the issues with policing and incarceration,
Speaker 2: and I got really interested in, well, what are the alternatives? Right?
Speaker 2: And that took me into you know, Angela Davis and
Speaker 2: Mariamcaba and all of that. And so when it came
Speaker 2: time to do my final thesis, one of my academic
Speaker 2: advisors knew I was a filmmaker and was like, we
Speaker 2: know you know how to write a paper, but we
Speaker 2: know you're a filmmaker, and why don't you do something
Speaker 2: creative and do a documentary? And I and I leughed
Speaker 2: because I was like, that's a lot of work, right,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I write a paper in like a day.
Speaker 2: But you know, but she dared me, and you know,
Speaker 2: I tend to accept dares. And so because it was academic,
Speaker 2: I wanted a variety of perspectives. So it wasn't just activists, right.
Speaker 2: So it's the District Attorney of La County is in
Speaker 2: the film. There's usc law professors, so there's several sociologists,
Speaker 2: mental health professionals, a former LAPD detective, a cop watcher,
Speaker 2: you know who like film's police all the time, and
Speaker 2: so the result was a very well rounded representative picture
Speaker 2: of these are the harms caused by police and prisons.
Speaker 2: This is why it persists. And you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of it is we're socialized into thinking that they are
Speaker 2: the solutions for our problems, despite the fact that we
Speaker 2: have data upon data that proves otherwise that you know,
Speaker 2: police don't keep us safe, prisons don't keep us safe.
Speaker 2: And then here are the alternatives, you know, most of
Speaker 2: which are already working. When people, when communities have resources,
Speaker 2: crime naturally comes down. When we have people who show
Speaker 2: up to mental health calls that aren't armed and uniformed,
Speaker 2: people don't get killed, you know, when people get the
Speaker 2: services they need. And so I finished the film in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. In August September did a small screening
Speaker 2: for friends and family and for members of the USC
Speaker 2: Criminology Department, and across the board people were like, people
Speaker 2: need to see this. This is really really good. It's
Speaker 2: really thorough, it's an educational and so, you know, I
Speaker 2: followed what they did with the movie Thirteenth was I
Speaker 2: started reaching out to different communities across the US to
Speaker 2: do community screenings where we would show the film and
Speaker 2: then have a panel of local leaders and organizers and
Speaker 2: so the community members when you know, because they get
Speaker 2: to the point where it's like Okay, well what do
Speaker 2: we do, It's like, well, here's the folks. And so
Speaker 2: this last Saturday was the sixty first screening of Reimagining
Speaker 2: Safety amazing and the festival was the Newark Reimagining Safety Festival,
Speaker 2: which organizers there created a festival around the film. So
Speaker 2: there was the film, the panel, there was art and
Speaker 2: music exhibitions and art and music is a big part
Speaker 2: of abolition and community and that sort of thing. And
Speaker 2: then we had info tables from local organizations that are
Speaker 2: out doing the work. And so yeah, we've had the
Speaker 2: sixty one screenings. The film is streaming on Amazon, YouTube, Google,
Speaker 2: Plan to me, and we have a bunch more coming up.
Speaker 2: We'll be in Dallas on August thirtieth as part of
Speaker 2: their end of Black August, all the things that they've
Speaker 2: been doing for Black August, so on August thirtieth, and
Speaker 2: I'll be in Detroit with General Strike US and the
Speaker 2: Black Panther Party of Detroit in September. So that's what's
Speaker 2: going on with that.
Speaker 1: I commend you. I congratulate you on the work on
Speaker 1: how you've been getting out the word and really engaging
Speaker 1: with community around your film, because I do think that
Speaker 1: it's extraordinarily important. And I want to tap into something
Speaker 1: that you said which I feel like is consistently lost
Speaker 1: when we are talking about policing, right that I live
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn in New York, and I will tell you
Speaker 1: that in the quote unquote highly resourced areas and neighborhoods
Speaker 1: of Brooklyn. Do you know what, I never see cops? Right,
Speaker 1: I never see cops. I see clean sidewalks, I see
Speaker 1: community resources, I see you know, shopping and schools and
Speaker 1: all of these things. I never see cops. In the
Speaker 1: lower resourced areas of Brooklyn. There are cops on every corner.
Speaker 1: There are those big, you know lights that are shown
Speaker 1: over the subway system. And what you said is just
Speaker 1: like what we know is that crime goes down and
Speaker 1: safety goes up when those communities are resourced and not
Speaker 1: resourced with police officers. And so why is it, Matthew,
Speaker 1: that we still live in a place even given all
Speaker 1: of the data that tells us that what communities that
Speaker 1: are plagued with crime need are resources for that community.
Speaker 1: Why is that something that is missed and we still
Speaker 1: continue to see, particularly in New York City, where we
Speaker 1: have a mayor who's a former cop that is giving
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars to the police depart wall
Speaker 1: cutting libraries. I mean, he just gave money back to
Speaker 1: the library so that they can open again on Sundays.
Speaker 1: But the logic with them is like, oh, no, we
Speaker 1: just need more cops and that equal safety, when the
Speaker 1: data tells us the opposite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the one hand, you know, it's sort of fascinating.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, it's incredibly frustrating and angering because
Speaker 2: the answer, well, there's a couple answers to that. First
Speaker 2: of all, we're bombarded with copaganda a large part, like
Speaker 2: half of the fictional shows. This has talked about in
Speaker 2: the documentary Doctor l. Jones from Halifax Nova, Scotch. She
Speaker 2: talks about fifty percent of our fictional programming is cop based,
Speaker 2: like crime shows, law shows, things like that. Thirty percent
Speaker 2: of what we consume overall is cop based. So like
Speaker 2: watching the show Cops or like all the variations of
Speaker 2: that law, law and order. I mean, I grew up
Speaker 2: watching Chips and you know in SWAT, so we're bombarded
Speaker 2: with there's a bad guy around every corner, evil is
Speaker 2: out there, and the only thing that can protect us
Speaker 2: are the cops. And in those shows, a lot of
Speaker 2: times it's the cops who don't follow the law of themselves, right,
Speaker 2: so they have free reign to break the roles because
Speaker 2: they have to because the evil people are so evil.
Speaker 2: So there's that part that we were bombarded with even
Speaker 2: and even our news media, right. And actually, I really
Speaker 2: I have to say I listened to there was an
Speaker 2: episode of Yours I heard a few days got I
Speaker 2: don't remember, I don't know when you recorded it, but
Speaker 2: you were talking about how the news media by and
Speaker 2: large is complicit in pushing these false narratives and everything.
Speaker 2: I was just like, yes, yes, yes, because I've seen
Speaker 2: it where like Cops City in Atlanta that's being built,
Speaker 2: and last year there were arrests made, there was a
Speaker 2: festival happening with forest protectors, and even on you know MSNBC,
Speaker 2: which is supposed to be quote the left, progress or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, Jose Bolart when he was reading the thing
Speaker 2: about there being a festival, scoffed at it as if
Speaker 2: it were people breaking the law that were arrested, but
Speaker 2: they know they were actually having a festival. And I
Speaker 2: mean I could go on and on, you know, especially
Speaker 2: in the wake of the campus protests protesting genocide and
Speaker 2: how that's being portrayed. So the news media, local and
Speaker 2: national plays a big part in pushing the police narratives
Speaker 2: and not really checking them on it. There's also, you know,
Speaker 2: and this has been you know, as somebody who's really
Speaker 2: believed in people and believes in the good in people,
Speaker 2: and that if we can appeal to people's compassion and empathy,
Speaker 2: that we can make big changes. Another unfortunate reality is
Speaker 2: the communities you're talking about, as you know, are mostly
Speaker 2: black and brown communities, and so they're not seeing as
Speaker 2: members of the community. And if it's like, well, the
Speaker 2: cops are there, but at least I feel safe over
Speaker 2: here in my mansion in Beverly Hills, which by the way,
Speaker 2: has it like a perimeter, you know, of cops and
Speaker 2: drones and all of that. And there's a multimillion dollar
Speaker 2: lawsuit with was it eleven hundred black people were pulled
Speaker 2: over by the police in the last two years and
Speaker 2: only two convictions, you know, so there's a multimillion dollar
Speaker 2: lawsuit there happening. So it's the media, it's how we've
Speaker 2: been socialized, and it's the othering and the dehumanization as well.
Speaker 2: Like I think all of that, and you know, police
Speaker 2: unions and the people that benefit from I mean, it's
Speaker 2: like budgets, right, police budgets. Despite all the rhetoric about
Speaker 2: defund the police, police budgets have continued to increase. Crime
Speaker 2: goes up and down regardless of that. And there was
Speaker 2: just a report in the state of California where they
Speaker 2: audited police response and actually police are doing less work
Speaker 2: than they ever have according to that report, but.
Speaker 1: They have more money.
Speaker 2: They have more money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I went into the wrong field.
Speaker 2: Ye. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I also want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about and this just you know, you want
Speaker 1: to talk about propaganda, copaganda. Donald Trump's campaign this week
Speaker 1: released a photo and it was an image of two
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and one it said, this is what your neighborhood
Speaker 1: will look like under Trump and it's this pristine, you know,
Speaker 1: quintessential suburb. And this is what your neighborhood will look
Speaker 1: like under Kamala and walls. And it was a picture
Speaker 1: of I am certainly taken out of context, but a
Speaker 1: bunch of black refugees and saying that if you welcome
Speaker 1: in the third world, you become the third world. And
Speaker 1: there is this, I mean, the insidious nature of racism
Speaker 1: that is present there, but then this idea that to
Speaker 1: have a country that welcomes in asylum seekers, that then
Speaker 1: you're welcoming in crime. I want to get your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the way in which MAGA and trump Ism has
Speaker 1: weaponized law and order quote unquote, and what their plan
Speaker 1: is in Project twenty twenty five, which I've talked about
Speaker 1: at nauseum on this show, what their plan is for
Speaker 1: police quote unquote reform. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to laugh for a second because, right,
Speaker 2: the law and Order party and then you know, mister,
Speaker 2: you know, thirty four convictions on everything else, and yeah,
Speaker 2: and like I heard, you know, there was somebody the
Speaker 2: other day who was talking about, oh, the millions of
Speaker 2: immigrants who were flooding into New York, right, But they're
Speaker 2: flooding into New flooding in quotes into New York because
Speaker 2: the the racist governors in Florida and Texas are putting
Speaker 2: people on buses, you know, and shipping them and you know,
Speaker 2: for a nation of immigrants, it's very clear which immigrants
Speaker 2: are being singled out as quote criminal, right, which feeds
Speaker 2: into the communities and what we're just talking about. And
Speaker 2: again when you look at at the data, the immigrants
Speaker 2: coming in are the least likely to be committic, like
Speaker 2: they commit they don't commit crime. You know, they're not
Speaker 2: the criminals that are being portrayed, right. And then you
Speaker 2: know they use that same like they bring up Chicago
Speaker 2: all the time. In Chicago's not even in the top ten,
Speaker 2: you know, most criminal cities. And so yeah, it's all
Speaker 2: the narrative. It's the other, right, the demonizing of the other,
Speaker 2: the fear of the other. Those people are the ones
Speaker 2: that are putting us at risk. And yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: all that that racist narrative that this country has been
Speaker 2: you know, subjected to for how many hundreds of years?
Speaker 2: Right at this point, do.
Speaker 1: You think that we will get to a place where
Speaker 1: we have policing that actually works, Like in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I truly don't mean to denigrate officers like as
Speaker 1: a whole, but policing was never really set up to
Speaker 1: stop crime. They don't stop crime. It wasn't set up
Speaker 1: in a way that police are seen as community actors,
Speaker 1: right like, as part of the community again with the
Speaker 1: other ring. And so you know, when we talk about
Speaker 1: police reform, what in your mind would reform look like?
Speaker 1: And do you foresee this ever actually coming to pass?
Speaker 1: Right Like after the murder of George Floyd, which we
Speaker 1: all witnessed in the middle of the pandemic, because everyone
Speaker 1: was at home, well those that were privileged, in order
Speaker 1: to be home and work remote work, they put together
Speaker 1: quote unquote bipartisan legislation, the George Floyd Policing Act, and
Speaker 1: after eight months it fell apart. So do you foresee
Speaker 1: a time and a space where we actually get the
Speaker 1: kind of police reform we need?
Speaker 2: No, And I'll tell you why. In my conflict resolution work,
Speaker 2: I often say that you can tell what an organization
Speaker 2: is committed to by the results they are producing. So
Speaker 2: we've been and actually Jody Armor talks about this in
Speaker 2: the film, and there's a section in the film where
Speaker 2: he chronicles the reforms in quotes of the last ten
Speaker 2: or fifteen years, right, body cameras, anti bias training, de
Speaker 2: escalation training, all of that, and by the way, on
Speaker 2: the average in police academies across the country. They spend
Speaker 2: sixty hours on firearms training, sixty hours on fighting and
Speaker 2: hand to hand submission holds and that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: and only eight hours on de escalation, which usually is
Speaker 2: wrapped into at the very end of the academy they
Speaker 2: do role playing exercises. Right. So, policing, as Alex Batali
Speaker 2: in the film says, is police are violence workers. They're
Speaker 2: there to suppress protests, they're there to inflict violence. They're
Speaker 2: there to uphold the interests of the state and the wealthy,
Speaker 2: and like, people get uncomfortable hearing that, But when you
Speaker 2: look at it, like it couldn't be more clear. With
Speaker 2: the campus protests and encampments right back in May and June, right,
Speaker 2: college kids, And I've been to the encampments, right, and
Speaker 2: all the narratives.
Speaker 1: Unarmed, unarmed on college.
Speaker 2: Kids hanging out eating pizza with banners saying stop the genocide, right,
Speaker 2: stop killing people. And what happens when the powers of
Speaker 2: best say it's time to clear them out. The cops
Speaker 2: in their riot gear with their pepper spray and their
Speaker 2: rubber bullets that are supposed to be less than lethal,
Speaker 2: but people get messed up with those rubber bullets, come
Speaker 2: in and clear them out. And then you have the
Speaker 2: pro Israel protesters who were given free reign and not stopped,
Speaker 2: who especially like a UCLA, were inflicting violence and the
Speaker 2: cops are nowhere to be found. And then once they
Speaker 2: pull back, the cops come in and you know, wipe
Speaker 2: out the protesters. So in the four years since George
Speaker 2: Floyd was murdered, and by the way, Minneapolis had all
Speaker 2: of the reforms leading up to George Floyd, in the
Speaker 2: four years since then, we've had more police killings, which
Speaker 2: have increased each year, police killing people, Budgets have increased,
Speaker 2: and sixty nine cops cities have been built or are
Speaker 2: in the process of being built across the country and
Speaker 2: people are like, oh, but those are training facilities. It's like,
Speaker 2: all right, post twenty twenty, what are they training for
Speaker 2: to suppress protests? And you know, people standing up for
Speaker 2: their rights and to end genocide and to have their
Speaker 2: needs met, bodily autonomy like all of that. And so
Speaker 2: policing as an institution like we talk about, and this
Speaker 2: goes into the other ring part which I was thinking
Speaker 2: about earlier, Like we talked about police were born out
Speaker 2: of slave catchers.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There were the slave patrols, yep. And it's easy to
Speaker 2: be like, oh, well, those were slaves and whatever. But
Speaker 2: in the north police were suppressing protests, suppressing the labor
Speaker 2: movement and union busting, union busting, suppressing labor unions. And
Speaker 2: then in the west, out here in the West, they
Speaker 2: were vigilantes to keep those folks in quotes off of
Speaker 2: in quotes our land. Right. So the whole institution is
Speaker 2: rooted in that. And then you take their training in
Speaker 2: the academy, which is overwhelmingly focused on violence and command
Speaker 2: and control of populations, and then they get out on
Speaker 2: the street and the way that they prove themselves to
Speaker 2: their fellow officers is getting in fights, making arrest, writing tickets.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There are no metri for how safe is a community?
Speaker 2: What did you do today to keep people safe?
Speaker 1: Right? And just to that point, what we learned during
Speaker 1: Ferguson in particular, were the ways in which they had
Speaker 1: set quotas in that city. In order to arrest a certainty,
Speaker 1: you needed to arrest a certain a number of people,
Speaker 1: You needed to ticket a certain number of people. So
Speaker 1: the incentive is not in the suppression of crime, it
Speaker 1: is in how many people can you catch? Yes, right,
Speaker 1: So that mentality is reinforced by the quota systems that
Speaker 1: are set up in these places.
Speaker 2: And there's I don't remember if you interviewed him or not.
Speaker 2: There's a book called An Inconvenient Cop, which is a
Speaker 2: former black NYPD officer who talks about those quotas and
Speaker 2: he literally joined the force because he was, like you
Speaker 2: wanted to find out why he had the experience as
Speaker 2: a black man, you know, in relation to NYPD. So
Speaker 2: all of that is out there, and so policing I've
Speaker 2: been saying it's not for the people and will never
Speaker 2: be for the people. What we can do and what
Speaker 2: is being done, and it just needs more awareness and
Speaker 2: support and funding and all of that. Are the community
Speaker 2: response teams, you know, violence prevention workers, which are being
Speaker 2: utilized in Newark for example, right, they took five percent
Speaker 2: of the Newark police budget put it into the Office
Speaker 2: of Violence Prevention, and they have all of these street
Speaker 2: teams like One Hood, Equal Justice. There's there's some other organizations,
Speaker 2: and those are the teams that respond to mental health
Speaker 2: calls and people needing wellness checks and things like that.
Speaker 2: And crime is it an all time low? Like a
Speaker 2: sixty year low in the city of Newark. And that's
Speaker 2: just you know, with the small budget. And there are
Speaker 2: teams like when I was doing the film, everybody was
Speaker 2: really focused on the Cahoots program in Eugene, Oregon, and
Speaker 2: the Star program in Denver, Colorado, and those are like
Speaker 2: the ogs that everybody refers to. And having done these
Speaker 2: sixty one screenings across the country and been in Sacramento,
Speaker 2: in San Antonio and Atlanta and Newark and you know
Speaker 2: all these other places, there are these violence prevention workers
Speaker 2: community responders, yeah, that are working. Is just they're not funded.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are volunteer. Some of them are
Speaker 2: connected to the police in some way because the police
Speaker 2: department wants to oversee. But when these groups go out,
Speaker 2: people aren't getting killed and not getting arrested either, and
Speaker 2: they're not calling for backup, you know, which increases the
Speaker 2: likelihood of violence.
Speaker 1: Matthew, we will leave it there today, but I just
Speaker 1: want to again thank you for the work, thank you
Speaker 1: for your film, and please just remind people where it
Speaker 1: is streaming now so that they can take a look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. So. Reimagining safetymovie dot Com is the
Speaker 2: website and it's streaming on Amazon to Be, YouTube and
Speaker 2: Google Play.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Hey dear friends on
Speaker 1: Woke af As always, Power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Speaker 1: H