“To the representatives of_____”: a defund the police letter

To the representatives of _______

The tide has turned in America and the people will no longer accept or be complicit in a society that does not give equal rights to all citizens.

There will be no “return to normal” after this.

This nation was formed on the principle that every person is born naturally free, and the singular purpose of a governing body is to protect every individual’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This beautiful ideal was brought about by the education of the masses after 1,000 years of religious rule, during which most people were subjugated to ignorance and strict social hierarchies.

The Declaration of Independence was a legal ode to the inherent freedom of all human beings, so full of passion and righteous fury that it inspired people all over the globe to throw off the yoke of monarchies and form their own democratic republics. Yet our founding fathers, when writing the Declaration of Independence, left out everyone who was not a white, land-owning male. This cultural illness of sexual and racial discrimination continued after we won independence, when the Constitution was written, despite the fact that Black and Native people had fought alongside the white colonists in support of freedom.

We as Americans can mourn the fact that our founding fathers were unable to conceptualize the humanity of other people. It is a tragedy.

The fact is, we founded this nation still fighting an ideological war over whether Black people were American citizens, and despite the Civil War being won by the abolitionists, we never actually resolved anything.

When our country ended the Civil War, we did not end slavery. We just put it in prisons.

Despite what the elite and privileged people of the United States say, we do not live in a post-racial or egalitarian society. We as a nation have yet to put anything in our Constitution that actually ends slavery and gives equal rights to all American citizens.

This is largely because the American people always have been, and still are, lied to about who the enemy is.

To this day the American people are told lies about Black people being fundamentally different, wrong, or inherently criminal. Black people are accused of not properly assimilating to dominant white culture or perpetuating their own suffering through laziness or drug use. Our perpetuation of poverty cycles leave them no recourse for self-preservation except illegal activity, making it even easier for white America to criminalize Black people as a whole group. On and on go the excuses that Americans make to each other about why so much inequality exists in our supposedly equal society.

This is how wealthy, white Americans- the true enemy of the people- have held and kept power since the beginning of this nation. The police have been funded thanks to the fear-mongering and lies they spread to the public. The police have filled the prisons with Black people, making those wealthy Americans even wealthier. The criminal justice system must undergo an overhaul.

The American people, marching and protesting en masse in solidarity with Black Americans now that all our eyes are open to the truth of what this country is, are demanding that the police be defunded as a start.

This country can and will become the great nation it was meant to be only when we rectify inequities, starting with funding social programs instead of police budgets.

There must be an immediate emergency budget meeting to begin redirecting money from your police department into social services, legal assistance, schools, and green jobs.

In addition, the public school curriculum must be immediately changed to include true world and American history, as told by non-white historians. The narrative that we are taught in public schools is one that clearly serves a white supremacist, racist narrative. As it is now, our public schools teach that Western Europeans created everything, made a few mistakes when they came to America, but that has all been fixed and we now live in an equal, post-racial society.

It is high time that public schools teach world history to teach (as a starting point): ancient China; the Silk Road as the great originator of trade and knowledge between northern Africa, the Middle East, and China; the inventions of the Golden Age of Islam; that “race” is an antiquated term based on the bunk science of white Europeans, used to justify slavery; the federally sanctioned and funded genocide of indigenous people in America and all over the world; cultural differences through an anthropological and sociological lens.

I believe telling true world and American history through an anthropological lens will help to end the sickness of white supremacy that still plagues our nation in even the most liberal of its non-Black citizens.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your direct and unwavering action on these matters of justice, public safety, and societal advancement.

Regards,
Charlene Eldon