June 1st, 2021 marked the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Over 35 city blocks of Black-owned houses, businesses and even churches were looted, burned and destroyed.
According to witness accounts, white citizens were deputized by law enforcement, and encouraged to harm and murder people of color. Scores were injured, and the exact number of people killed is still unknown, possibly around 300, many of whom ended up in unmarked graves.
Yet, not one person was brought to justice. The incident was ignored by the media and law enforcement, willfully covered up, and those in power were almost able to whitewash these horrific events from history. However, despite the forced amnesia, survivor and witness testimonies have revealed the truth.
One hundred years isn’t that long ago. One need not look far for overwhelming evidence of insidious denial of Black humanity, lives and dignity. Take a moment to absorb that it’s only been a century since one of the largest American massacres was nearly successfully erased from history. The racism that is woven into the fabric of our nation is what allowed the silence to prevail over the ugly reality of what occurred in Tulsa. That same silence has allowed our policing system to function largely unchecked until only recently.
It is crucial that we heed the guidance of those who’ve been harmed by our policing system so that we can recognize and subsequently begin to diffuse the racism that’s embedded all around us.
Northampton is honored to have organizers and educators who have devoted themselves to envisioning and working for an anti-racist future. Thanks to the work of the Northampton Policing Review Commission and their Reimagining Safety report we now have expert advice to lead us away from over-policing and instead toward a new era of community care.
The commission urges the mayor and City Council to replace armed police as the only option for emergency response with a Department of Community Care. Fully funding this new department would mean that peer responders would be on call 24/7 to handle emergencies within the community. Peer responders will be unarmed and trained in de-escalation, harm reduction, and would connect individuals with support in the city outside of carceral options. The Department of Community Care would center healing responses, minimize harmful power imbalances that often exacerbate emotional distress, and incorporate critical learning from a host of similar initiatives across the nation.
In the past year, a group of organizers have coalesced to confront racism in our community and bring about a future for Northampton that is safer for everyone. Northampton Abolition Now (NAN) is comprised of local educators and organizers who collectively advocate for radical reimagining of public safety. NAN has taken the lead on gathering support from residents, organizations and businesses to foster a community grounded in justice and accountability that meets the needs of all people.
According to NAN and their many supporters, the only way to protect Black lives is to invest in and expand our safety and well-being beyond policing. The way we can achieve those goals is by reallocating the full $882,000 that was cut from the police budget in June 2020 to community-led safety programs, fully fund a new Department of Community Care, and continue to defund the police by another 50% in 2022.
The Department of Community Care must be fully funded in order to be fully staffed to provide multiple types of responders to community needs. To build these systems, we need a team of experts directing peer-led non-coercive crisis response systems.
In the words of Northampton Arts Council board member Kent Alexander, “The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police. There is not a single era in United States history in which police were not a force of violence against Black people.”
There’s nothing new or radical about acknowledging that policing was never designed to meet the needs of marginalized communities — it was designed to control them. Compounding that reality is that mental health and social services have been systemically underfunded or reduced, leaving the police as the only on-call 24/7 service that’s available in many communities.
The mayor’s proposed budget for next fiscal year only covers a director and an administrative support staffer. Given the scope of work required to build a thriving Department of Community Care, inadequate funding would set the new department up to fail.
We cannot undo the horrors of the past, but we can make collective decisions that build an actively anti-racist community. We can do that by investing in human needs, building a safer, more inclusive Northampton, investing in long-term structural change and drawing from local wisdom and practices of peer-led responses to people in distress to fund new peer-led emergency responses.
Let us honor those who suffered and perished in the Tulsa race massacre and other race-related violence by admitting that racism is indeed all around. We must listen to and act on the recommendations of organizers who are working to envision a future that divests from policing and invests in real community safety. It’s on us to respect the varied needs of all our residents and create communities where no more harm is ever inflicted on Black, brown, and people of color.
Chelsea Kline is a social justice advocate in western Massachusetts and a mother of three. She writes a monthly column for the Gazette.