The movement had hoped to also get Obama’s attention with actions on Thursday. Movement organizers were highly critical of the town hall on race hosted by ABC News, and questioned the treatment of Erica Garner, a high-profile activist and the daughter of Eric Garner, a New York man who was killed when he was choked and brought to the ground by an NYPD officer.
I’m not sure what the point of #POTUStownhall is. It can’t be about solutions to police killing Black folks.
Activists who spoke with BuzzFeed News say they feel his legacy should include taking meaningful steps “and not just presiding over the conversation” as one activist put it.
“For people who had been in the streets, the frustration with Obama and other elected officials was there are things they can do to transform our communities and they’re not doing it,” said Mervyn Marcano, a spokesperson for the Movement for Black Lives coalition. “Around the country, if you look at some of these budgets and start thinking about policy, folks felt like this was the time to start talking about divestment.”
But organizations tethered to the nationwide, diffuse web of organizations referred to as Black Lives Matter or the Movement for Black Lives, many have, in some form or another pushed for a broad reduction in spending on police that rankles police unions and elected officials and local find specious, if not implausible. But organizers like to say that resources that come from a decrease in police spending could be redirected into programs and institutions that reduce crime and invest in the black communities where the police are often viewed as an oppressive, sometimes militarized, force.
They’re not alone, though, in thinking that too much authority has been directed toward the police.
When Dallas Police Chief David Brown said, “We’re asking cops to do too much in this country,” it struck a chord with movement activists. Since the founding of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2012 — and a definitive wave of protests after the August 2014 killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo. — grassroots organizing has seldom included law enforcement sitting at the table. Activists have all sorts of ideas about reducing the police presence in communities, spending less on police, and forcing the police to cede types of authority.
But in recent months, another idea has entered the consciousness: Could the answer be working closer with police jurisdictions locally?
“Maybe (that’s the answer), to be honest,” said one activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to they could speak openly about such an arrangement. “What Chief Brown said was really important to us. Police are doing too much. They’re called upon to be social workers and deal with situations they are not trained to handle and they shouldn’t be.”
Another well-known activist shaken by the shooting of officers told BuzzFeed News that if working with police on the ground results in less dead civilians, movement activists should consider that as a model. The focus, the activist said, should be on solutions and not on finger-pointing police as the problem.