The “Justice for George Floyd” petition has over a million signatures. “Justice for Breonna Taylor” has over 10 million. You’ve probably seen these widely-shared petitions, demanding justice for the deaths of Black people across the country through the arrest of the police officers responsible. Some of these petitions have achieved their stated goal, and all have helped bring national attention to the issue of police brutality. But there is no justice for the dead. It cannot be served. There is no way to balance the scales — no way to show the dead the world mourning their absence, no way to show them the world changing for the better, and most tragically, no way to bring them back to life. So we must focus on justice for the living.
People are feeling powerless. We face a virus for which we do not have a vaccine or cure, an economy that is failing us, and police officers who seem to have unchecked power. Many Americans are at home: unemployed, frustrated and uncomfortable with the status quo. We can capitalize on that discomfort. Change is a risk, and scary — but our status quo is scarier. Socially, economically, educationally and politically, there is no going back to normal. Where can we go instead?
Petitions are a great action item. They are easily signed and shared, and they serve as clear evidence of public pressure. Maybe this is why they have been one of the most common calls to action on social media in the past several weeks. However, they are not the most impactful way to individually help effect change. In the face of perceived powerlessness, we must search for the avenues where we have the most power.
By examining the impact of different ways to create change, it becomes clear that our individual power and political capital is concentrated locally. Locally, we can reimagine our schools and our cities. We can rebuild from the ground up. National change comes from local change, and local change comes from you calling the local officials who serve your community — school board members, city councilors, district attorneys — and telling them what you want.
The answer to the question “Where can we go instead of back to normal?” is subjective. But the answer to the question “How do we get there?” is clear.
The Limits of Signing Petitions
As petitions demonstrate, charging officers is one way to serve justice. But officers are hard to convict. In 2015, 994 people were shot and killed by the police. 18 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter. Only eight of them were convicted. When district attorneys prosecute a case involving an officer, they represent the state in the case and try to convict the officer. Often they lose, painfully and publicly. Judges and juries are usually sympathetic to the officers and therefore less likely to convict them. There are also legal protections in place, intended to allow police officers to make split-second decisions about the use of force without fear of legal consequences. Those protections — qualified immunity among them — make convicting officers an uphill battle.
Many activists are working to address the failings of our ability to convict officers. They know that officers must be held accountable for their crimes, too. Ultimately, however, when people sign a petition demanding that an officer be charged, they are just pressuring a district attorney to charge an officer. The petition does not guarantee a conviction. And even a conviction does not erase previous instances of police brutality, nor systematically prevent future ones. A conviction is not the fullest way to use our collective political capital. More compelling options exist for those who want to serve justice.
The Role of District Attorneys
Clearly, there are aspects of the criminal justice system that make achieving real justice near impossible in some cases. But the system is malleable. Take the role of a district attorney. DAs might face tough odds when attempting to convict an officer, but they can also work to achieve justice for their community in other ways. DAs can make policy changes that have far-reaching impacts in a community, in a way that a single conviction cannot.
One example is Rachael Rollins, the DA in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, who calls herself “smart on crime.” She helped file an injunction in federal court that prevents federal authorities from making civil immigration arrests in state courthouses. Now, witnesses and victims can appear in court without fear of being arrested because of their immigration status. She made it the default for her office to dismiss low-level misdemeanor charges, such as shoplifting, breaking and entering into vacant properties for the purpose of sleeping or escaping the cold, drug possession, disorderly conduct, and more — charges usually evidence of a lack of resources, rather than criminal intent. She also created an outside panel of investigators that reviews every officer-involved fatal shooting in the district. “We do this job, at times, for convictions. But we can hold people accountable in many different ways,” she said to the HPR. “Suffolk County has spoken to what it is that they want. They want progressive policies.”
These progressive policies change the system. They address the ways that Black people are disproportionately punished and incarcerated. Rollins does not criminalize poverty and homelessness in Suffolk County. Data-driven and solution-oriented, her policies are designed to make the community safer and healthier. Though different communities have different needs, her policies are evidence of the power a district attorney has to effect systemic change. In addition to demanding that DAs charge officers involved in police brutality, we should be asking them how their office’s policies are helping us. We should be asking them to prove to us, with data, that they are using their role to make our communities better. And if their answers are unsatisfactory, we should be voting them out of office.
School Board Members Wield Power, Too
District attorneys are not the only local officials with the power to effect change. In Milwaukee and Minneapolis, school boards have voted to terminate their contracts with local police departments. That represents over 110,000 students who will not have to interact with officers in their place of education.
Both districts acted because the community called for it. Larry Miller, president of the Milwaukee School Board, told the HPR, “When we get close to a thousand letters … it’s not normal.” “I had thousands [of emails],” Kim Ellison, who serves on the Minneapolis School Board, similarly told the HPR. “I’d never seen that many emails. My phone kept ringing the day of the vote. That had never happened before.” In comparison to the number of people who have signed the most popular petitions, or the number of people who posted on #BlackoutTuesday, a few thousand people is not that many. But it was enough. More than enough; it was more than these school board members had ever seen before.
Across the United States, city councillors and school board members control billions and billions of dollars. As a Harvard student, I consider myself a stakeholder in the Cambridge community. As a resident of Boston, I am a constituent of each person who sits on the Boston City Council and the Boston School Committee. As an older cousin, godmother and aunt, I care about the decisions that school board members make in Norwood, Canton, Foxborough and Franklin, Massachusetts, as well as Glastonbury, Connecticut. The Cambridge Public Schools annual budget is over $213 million. The Boston Public Schools budget is $1.139 billion. That money buys books, hires teachers, renovates school buildings and fuels school buses. It creates after-school programs and pays for some students’ only daily meal. That money is largely controlled by a few elected or appointed board members, whose contact information is usually publicly available.
Your Impact on Local Change
What if, in addition to signing petitions, millions of people also called their local school board and city council and demanded something? Surely you have an opinion about the millions of dollars that are funneled into the communities you care about.
“Local politics is your day-to-day life on a regular basis, and so I’m glad that people are realizing the power they have,” said Ellison. Paula Phillips, a member of the Milwaukee School Board, mentioned that while terminating the contract with the police department had been discussed before, she didn’t think they had “that same sort of traction [as they have now] because it does have to be a community effort to reimagine these things.”
However, attention on national elections still significantly supersedes that paid to local elections. In 2019, sixty thousand people cast their votes in a Milwaukee school board election. In the same district, more than ninety-five thousand ballots were cast in the April 2020 presidential primary, despite the fact that only five polling places were open and voters had to choose between their health and their right to vote.
When we don’t pay attention to the people in power in our own communities, we disenfranchise ourselves. We lose an opportunity to fight the same racial injustices which led to recent protests. There are too many people in this country whose right to vote has been stolen from them for us to continue to disregard small, local off-cycle races. Our power to effect change does not end with signing a petition. It doesn’t end on election day, either. Pay attention to the meetings of these boards, the motions they’re passing and the decisions they’re making.
Change, reform, progress — they are not trickle-down. They’re built from the ground up. Public officials work for you, not the other way around. You are qualified to improve the communities you know and love. Call someone who has power and tell them what to do with it.
Image source: Image by CDMA is used under the Unsplash license