Latest in a series of posts in the wake of the George Floyd murder 
The 2020 NCC Peace and Social Justice Conference
Police-Free Future panel, October 15, 2020
video
Here’s an exercise that PV uses with workshop audiences that gets into the nitty-gritty of abolition and grounds it in reality. PV says the exercise shows you how complicated this all is.
He encourages people to choose a specific issue and then move through the chart, asking questions like what do we want to happen, what might we do to keep the issue from happening in the first place, what institutions might there be to handle the issue?
PV:
Then AS gives us a mental health scenario that we might witness and asks us to think it through per the chart.
Suppose you look out your window, and there’s a half-naked guy on your lawn gyrating crazily and singing.
Whom are you going to call?
And what outcome do you expect?
What happens if someone without a gun, a badge, a taser, mace shows up?
How would we expect a police officer to handle this?
AS:
One question is how exact do you want or expect your first responder to be in his/her first assessment. Now, when people call the police, they expect the police to use their knowledge, the extra time they’ve gained, and other resources in their department, to deal with the situation. And they have loads of tools.