“Police Are Not Designed to Solve the Problems People Are Facing”
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, calls to cut police budgets have spread like wildfire. In an interview with Jacobin, two Chicago city council members explain why they’re calling to defund the police and why the city’s mayor Lori Lightfoot can’t credibly call herself a “progressive.”
The Chicago Police Department headquarters in the Boystown neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago. Alyson Hurt / Flickr
The speed with which the demand to “defund the police” has caught on in response to the mass protests all throughout the country in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has been shocking. And leftist elected officials have often been at the forefront of that call.
Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez is the alderwoman of Chicago’s thirty-third ward. Jeanette B. Taylor is the alderwoman of Chicago’s twentieth ward. Both are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and were two of the six signatories on a recent op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times entitled “Cutting funding for police could lead to a better and safer Chicago.”
The alderwomen spoke with Jacobin deputy editor Micah Uetricht for the Jacobin Radio podcast The Vast Majority. You can listen to the episode here. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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