Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Dereka, Welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. You have written
Speaker 1: a book that is sure to get you a ton
Speaker 1: of praise and then I mean death threats and criticisms
Speaker 1: from the high heavens, because I mean, like I've learned
Speaker 1: this personally. If you even suggest a criticism of the police,
Speaker 1: especially in America, you're seen as somebody who hates old police.
Speaker 1: You're seen as somebody who loves crime. You're seen as
Speaker 1: somebody who just doesn't believe in the functioning society. But
Speaker 1: when you go abolish the police, I mean, how let's
Speaker 1: start with that. How do you even begin a conversation
Speaker 1: around like abolishing the police without having people believe that
Speaker 1: then we're gonna be living like in like a mad
Speaker 1: Max dystopian future. Oh well, it depends on who I'm
Speaker 1: talking to, right, So there are people who I organize
Speaker 1: with or communities where I live, and when I talk
Speaker 1: about police abolition, the first question is, you know, what
Speaker 1: about the murderers? What about the rapists? Will I be saying?
Speaker 1: And I'm usually in conversation with people who are most
Speaker 1: vulnerable to violence from their lovers, their neighbors, strangers, cops,
Speaker 1: And so then I asked them, with a million cops
Speaker 1: right now, do you feel safe? And usually their answer
Speaker 1: is no. And what abolition feels like to them is nothing. Right,
Speaker 1: it feels like absolutely not. And when you have nothing,
Speaker 1: no investment in your education and your health care, you know,
Speaker 1: and any of the things that would make you live
Speaker 1: a life where you can thrive, police feel like something,
Speaker 1: and something can feel like everything is nothing. And so
Speaker 1: I try to articulate is that police abolition or prison
Speaker 1: abolition is not merely the absence of police, right, it's
Speaker 1: eliminating the root causes of harm, and it's eliminated the
Speaker 1: kind of society that could rely on police to solve
Speaker 1: that harm because we know police can't solve it. So
Speaker 1: that's sort of where I start. I ask people if
Speaker 1: they feel safe, what makes them feel safe? And how
Speaker 1: can we start building that world together instead of just
Speaker 1: relying on police to do that work because it's ineffective.
Speaker 1: I asked this question, I go, why can we not
Speaker 1: as society not just eliminate the need for police in
Speaker 1: those certain areas? So we go, I agree with you,
Speaker 1: police shouldn't be helping people unlock their cause. Police shouldn't
Speaker 1: be helping a homeless person who's on the street, Police
Speaker 1: shouldn't be interacting with somebody who has a mental illness.
Speaker 1: Police shouldn't be coming to you because you played your
Speaker 1: music so loud, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And police, I
Speaker 1: think would say the same thing. So if we eliminate
Speaker 1: the need for police to do those things, and then
Speaker 1: they can focus on subduing criminals, you know, like, as
Speaker 1: you said, the murderers, the killers, the kidnappers, or whatever
Speaker 1: it would be, would that not solve the problem. Why
Speaker 1: do you still argue for abolition as a whole? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Well one reason it's because we should ask
Speaker 1: questions like why do people kill people? Oh, why do
Speaker 1: people commit sex with a violence? Because sending police to
Speaker 1: go and arrest someone who's a murderer, it doesn't prevent
Speaker 1: the murder. Right. So I think about the neighborhood where
Speaker 1: I grew up. So many black voice I have questions
Speaker 1: on don't live to become in They just don't. They
Speaker 1: don't make it past twenty one, they don't make it
Speaker 1: past fifteen, they don't make it past thirty. It's not
Speaker 1: as if police are standing out in front of their
Speaker 1: houses every night protecting them from the bullets that enter
Speaker 1: their windows. That's not what policing do. Police can go
Speaker 1: get the person who may have killed them, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't save lives. That's fifteen sixteen thousand people who are
Speaker 1: killed in the US. Sixteen thousand people rather who are
Speaker 1: killed in the US every single year. And what we
Speaker 1: essentially task police to do is go be body searchers
Speaker 1: when we actually know what eliminates and prevents murders, right,
Speaker 1: which is a strong economy, jobs, healthcare, education, being connected
Speaker 1: as a part of a community where there's accountability. If
Speaker 1: you're disrupting communities by taking away jobs, by decimating education,
Speaker 1: by putting people in prison, so then when they come
Speaker 1: out they're in a much more precarious situation in the
Speaker 1: first place, you're essentially creating the conditions for more of alens, right,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't keep anybody safe. In a world where
Speaker 1: the police have been abolished. Two things. One, what is
Speaker 1: the transitionary period? You know, because that's a scary part.
Speaker 1: It's like because when you go abolished the police, people
Speaker 1: go like, so no police tomorrow? Does that mean we
Speaker 1: get right? And then the second part of that question is,
Speaker 1: so it's like, one, what is the transitionary period? And
Speaker 1: two what then happens when somebody kills people have been
Speaker 1: killing from Bible times? You know, so what that happens?
Speaker 1: So let's starts with what is the transitionary period? Yes?
Speaker 1: Can I actually answer the questions in rivers ahead? So, um,
Speaker 1: if we think about something like, I don't know, murder,
Speaker 1: lots of murder happened because a man wants to control
Speaker 1: the sexuality of a woman. Okay, and so that's not
Speaker 1: something that's natural to a man, it's something he is
Speaker 1: conditioned to do under patriarchy. Right, So abolitionist acts, how
Speaker 1: can we eradicate what's conditioning men to believe that they
Speaker 1: should be able to control a woman's sexual life? Right?
Speaker 1: How do we eradicate that impulse to say, no, you
Speaker 1: can't leave this house, No you can't break up to
Speaker 1: the point where we will murder that person. The second
Speaker 1: reason why people kill each other is for control, Um,
Speaker 1: like over petty arguments something you said. And I'm using
Speaker 1: men as an example because they're overwhelmingly convicted of murdering, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: not to yeah, not to this any man. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the second reason why people kill each other, it's because
Speaker 1: of these these petty arguments. Right, It's like you said
Speaker 1: something and so to my manhood, and now I'm angry.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna that's exactly exactly. So people are conditioned
Speaker 1: to do that. And the good thing about well, it's
Speaker 1: not good that they're conditioned, but that conditioning can be undone. Right.
Speaker 1: We can teach people to have different kinds of relationships.
Speaker 1: We can teach men and boys and children how to
Speaker 1: interact with women differently, or people who are trance of
Speaker 1: people are queer. I don't disagree with that. I wonder,
Speaker 1: isn't that not leading to a utopian place? Like it's
Speaker 1: it's a utopian ideal. But what happens? I still ask
Speaker 1: the only question, which is what happens if eight out
Speaker 1: of ten men are like, we've been conditioned. We we're
Speaker 1: fine with this. True out of ten men come and go,
Speaker 1: I'm taking what's yours, I'm killing your woman. I'm doing
Speaker 1: who then? Now? Yes, Which is why I try to
Speaker 1: answer the questions in reverse, because one abolition does not
Speaker 1: happen overnight. There are a million cops, there are twenty
Speaker 1: three hundred jails in prisons, that eighteen thousand long forced
Speaker 1: me agencies. America loves cops. There's no way abolition is
Speaker 1: going to happen overnight, and there is no abolitionist who
Speaker 1: I know, who are organized with who expects it to happen.
Speaker 1: But we do expect people is to be committed to
Speaker 1: experimentations and figuring out how to get there. How do
Speaker 1: we get to that too? Out of ten? Because right
Speaker 1: now we're in a society where it's like note out
Speaker 1: of ten, how do we how do we even get there?
Speaker 1: And so what's frustrating is that people will have to
Speaker 1: take a whole step back and say, well, you don't
Speaker 1: have an answer for every single scenario, so there do
Speaker 1: anything right? What's so sad is that cops don't have
Speaker 1: an answer for every single scenario. But who is funded police? Right,
Speaker 1: we get increased police budgets, murder jumps, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to increase police. Well, if they knew the answer, if
Speaker 1: more police was the answer, then why isn't murder decreasing?
Speaker 1: Why is it theft decreasing? Why isn't all these ills
Speaker 1: in society decreasing? And so we're doing the inverse right,
Speaker 1: So the one example that's usually helping for me the
Speaker 1: analogy of like a house with the with the leaky roof, right,
Speaker 1: So you have dripping and dripping and dripping, and then
Speaker 1: you put a bucket underneath it to catch this water.
Speaker 1: The leak picks up. Next thing you know, the buckets
Speaker 1: are overflowing, and at some point someone who has sent
Speaker 1: to the house says, we need to get rid of
Speaker 1: these buckets because they're like, it's mess everywhere. It's not
Speaker 1: working on the leak, and abolitionists are trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: why is the house leaking in the first place. It right,
Speaker 1: and the police are kind of like the buckets. It's
Speaker 1: how buckets don't kill people. They're kind of like the buckets.
Speaker 1: People are like, you want to take buckets out of
Speaker 1: my house. This is gonna flood, it's gonna smell like
Speaker 1: no dw it's gonna be messy, and we're like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, we don't want your house to flood. We
Speaker 1: want the roof to stop leaking. And it's gonna take
Speaker 1: much more to stop that roof from leaking than it
Speaker 1: is just to keep replacing buckets. Buying buckets getting different
Speaker 1: colors of buckets. That's there's only so much we can
Speaker 1: do with that, because buckets were not intended to stop leaks, right.
Speaker 1: That takes a different kind of skill and a different
Speaker 1: kind of imagination, a different kind of commitment. Fundamentally, what
Speaker 1: you're saying is Americans need to think about solving the
Speaker 1: cause instead of only treating the symptoms. And to that,
Speaker 1: I say good luck. Okay, Deerka, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me. It's been amazing having you here, and
Speaker 1: your book is twice as amazing as the conversation because
Speaker 1: you can have it for much longer. Wat's the Daily
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Speaker 1: Central podcast