After the video of former police officer Derek Chauvin pinning George Floyd to the ground went viral, I felt like all I could do was watch. I watched the video of Floyd begging for his life. Then, I watched protesters throng in the streets after months of lockdown, full of grief and rage and a desire for justice. I was glued to my phone as I searched for answers about what I could do in this moment.
Social media was ablaze with recommendations: Uplift BIPOC voices! Venmo your Black friends! Read this book and be anti-racist! These were all important points on their own; still, I couldn’t help but feel bemused at the way a part of of white America seemed to, overnight, become concerned about racism. My friends and I joked that white people were discovering activism. But I also knew I had to be brutally honest with myself, because being a “person of color” didn’t excuse me from having some similar reckoning. Asian Twitter users were quick to point out the ways that anti-Blackness in the Asian American community and the Model Minority Myth contribute to the marginalization of Black Americans.
I kept seeing colorful graphics encouraging Asian youth to talk to their families about police brutality, social justice, and even abolition. There were countless resources for combating anti-Blackness and engaging in activism. It was incredible to witness this outpouring of political mobilization by Asians in solidarity with Black Americans. And it was a terrifying personal challenge. In my family, any attempts from the younger folks to talk about politics was quickly shut down as a sign of disrespect. My parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents emerged from the aftermath of war and refashioned themselves in the mirror of this new country. What did I know, with my little liberal arts education? My family members kept their heads down. If they ever felt that the powers that be had wronged us, they never said a peep; they were just grateful to be here.
While I was nervously trying to craft my lesson plan on systemic racism for my family, many Asian American activists were publicly and firmly positioning police brutality as an Asian American issue. The shared experience of being nonwhite in the U.S. is the collective memory of state-sanctioned violence. As the U.S. took its empire-building project to Southeast Asian countries in the 1960s, police were waging war against the country’s Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and low-income residents at home. Just as Asian activists in the Third World Liberation Front united with other marginalized groups against imperialism and colonialism, Asian activists today are picking up the mantle against police brutality.
In Minneapolis, where I live, hopes for substantially changing the police department that murdered George Floyd are riding on a key amendment to the city charter. Despite the (incorrect) rhetoric from out-of-state media about Minneapolis police being defunded and even the promises of many city council members to “abolish” the police, the department remains intact.
The charter amendment, proposed by the organization Yes 4 Minneapolis, seeks to dissolve the Minneapolis Police Department as it is known today and replace it with the Department of Public Safety. This new department, proponents say, would have other professionals besides police respond to crises, such as mental health professionals and social workers. Advocates have not ruled out the possibility that police would still be a part of this department – in fact, they emphasize that the amendment would not get rid of police altogether.
At the core of its messaging, Yes 4 Minneapolis is asking voters to imagine a world without policing. This idea captivated me when it was first launched into the mainstream by the Minneapolis-based Black Visions Collective in the summer of 2020. It was a simple yet world-altering invitation. It felt like standing on the precipice of history. Several local AAPI-led organizations are backing this charter amendment, following the groundwork built by Black abolitionist scholars and leaders.
Abolition and a puppet show
On Saturday the Asian Minnesotan Alliance for Justice hosted an event called “Reimagining Public Safety as Asian Americans,” one of many community conversations hosted by advocates of the charter amendment. AMAJ’s stated purpose is to “mend the social divides and fight the inequities that are both rooted in white supremacy and that are exacerbated by the pandemic.”
Performers and artists took to the stage for two hours before tables broke out into groups. I could only be there for the first half, but the conversation was much different that I imagined. There were no policy wonks lecturing me and no head-spinning jargon. Instead, the event opened with a moving slam poem performance. Then, organizers rolled out what looked like a black booth. Out popped a puppet with black hair, who proceeded to recount to an actor about how she had been told at a dog park, “Go back to your country!” In the next act, a different puppet and the actor witness a Vietnamese woman being attacked by a white person. After they heroically ward off the attacker, the actor tries to offer the woman help. When his friend is puzzled that she won’t accept an escort home, the puppet explains that as an older Asian woman, she likely has learned to move on from a bad experience as quickly as possible and wants to avoid having to repay him for his help – a cultural expectation.
In their last performance, a daughter and father witness their bánh mì restaurant get robbed. The dad wants to call the police, but the daughter exclaims that the robber was another Asian person and the cops “can’t tell us apart and might arrest me instead!” The show proceeds with the daughter trying to convince her stubborn father that sometimes, police aren’t the right people to respond to a crisis. It ends humorously with a musical score, where she sings “Imagine a world with no police!” and her father sings “With some police!” and then acquiesces: “With less police.”
Conversing in community
Police and prison abolition aren’t necessarily new concepts to me. Having reported on the movement to defund the police in Minneapolis, I was familiar with many of Yes 4 Minneapolis’ core talking points. But to see many of the same scenarios I had swirling in my head for the last year acted out – by puppets, no less – felt ingenious in its simplicity and artistry. Since the upsurge of sinophobic rhetoric and anti-Asian violence, popularly conceptualized as interpersonal violence rather than systemic, went mainstream, we have seen some communities turn to increased policing as their idea of protection. This butts up against a growing desire to minimize reliance on the police. The play reflected real questions relevant to the Asian community (and me, specifically) in this time. How do I explain to my mom that she should rethink calling the police if her nail salon was robbed? How do I talk to my grandma about how her Black and Hmong neighbors in Eastside St. Paul have been constantly overcriminalized and surveilled by police? I wasn’t given all the answers, but there were Asian activists willing to help me start that conversation.
The Yes 4 Minneapolis charter amendment has been criticized on several fronts, primarily for its vagueness. Residents want to know how advocates will ensure that the Public Safety Department won’t be MPD under a different name. Some are concerned with entrusting the matter to the City Council, since council members will be the ones to draft the ordinances governing the department. They want to be assured they won’t be left even less safe. And, rightfully, they want to know what exactly this department will look like. Advocates say they don’t have all the answers now, because the future of the department will be shaped by community members participating in events like this one. They’re waiting for voters’ greenlight come November, after which there will presumably be even more listening sessions and community conversations.
For some communities of color, particularly those who live in constant economic and social precariousness, asking them to bank on such an uncertain future can be a lot. My family took a gamble and went all in for the “American Dream.” When I point out the racist structures upholding this dream, perhaps they feel like I’m tearing into their decision to leave all they have ever known. Challenging our elder’s beliefs with compassion for their own lived experiences with war and trauma is a delicate process.
But this burden falls within the community, as the diverse needs of Asians continue to be ignored by the dominant political parties of this country. These conversations are not only political actions; it is a display of care for those that came before us and those that will come after.
To learn more about police abolition, you can start here:
MPD 150: A People’s Project Evaluating Policing
The Conversation | The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
The New York Times Magazine | Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind
Abolition MPLS | Abolition 101 (YouTube video)
The End of Policing by Alex Vitale
I’d love to hear your thoughts. What does public safety look like to you? What kind of police reform or abolitionist movements exist where you live? Leave a comment below!
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