Beyond Family Conversations & Re: Defunding the Police
This is a moment to take seriously the cause to defund the police even while we hold the conversations necessary with our families. While these conversations unfold in our family, we must also do the work outside of our families, to move our work colleagues, friend networks, and organizing to support defunding the police and allocating resources to community services.
This past week, my aunt called and asked me, once again, why are the police killing Black people? We talked about the video, police violence against Black people, and her complicated feelings about the protests and the violence she was seeing on tv.
“Why do people have to destroy things?, she asked, “They’ll only scare people away from supporting their cause.” I talked to her about the history of Black people’s experience in the U.S., putting in context how our time in the U.S. only began in the 90s and how many police killings we’ve seen already and how Black people have been treated in the U.S. since they were brought here as slaves in 1619. I reminded her of our previous conversations about Eric Garner, how we saw the court system fail to indict and prosecute, and how the legal and political systems have done little to stop police killings. At the end of the call, my aunt poignantly asked instead, “Why are the police doing this that is causing people to loot?”
Yes to this breakthrough moment. While parts of the conversation were hard and problematic, to my surprise, my aunt’s view shifted within a call. Yet, the harsh reality is that it took my aunt six years to understand only a small piece of fear and anger from the Black community. As the weeks rolled on, my mom and other aunts were slowly coming around to understand why the violent protests and what’s wrong with how governments have responded. Still, the work continues to develop my family’s thinking and actions to support the lives of Black people beyond police killings.
We are having conversations with our families about this moment, about how police violence is very much a part of the Black experience, but I believe, if we challenge our families and the Asian American community, they too understand that the police do not help us either. When I see police misconduct and violence, it further solidifies what I have known on personal and professional levels.
I was in the second grade when my mom first called the police to intervene in a domestic matter. The last time my mom called the police I was in 12th grade. After ten years, my mom lamented that it was time she stopped calling the police because it would only mean she would be left to pay the fees and fines associated with calling them. Even though things had not changed in our living situation, we were left to deal with these matters by enduring the violence. I can recount other experiences of incidents of harm against my family that when we called the police — it went unresolved and did not redeem our sense of dignity or helped to recover from the impact of violence.
In 2016, I wrote that an officer once remarked that it was my mother’s fault for keeping me and my brothers in a dangerous situation. I was expected to interpret what he said to her. As a child, I could feel the lack of respect and dignity because we were immigrants. As I grew up, I understood that my experience with the police isn’t exclusive to immigrants.
As an immigration attorney, I interact with the police regularly. For many people in immigration detention, arrests by the police is what leads them to be put into deportation proceedings in the first place. When undocumented people or noncitizens are arrested and I am called to represent them, I must first find them. Many times, particularly in Georgia, they sit in county jail waiting to be picked up by immigration officials, even when they’re being charged with minor violations. The anxiety of dealing with the police as a child washes through me like muscle memories. Every time.
A WORLD BEYOND POLICING
I imagine what it would have been like if my mom had in her hand a community number that she could call, where on the other end of the line someone asks her in Vietnamese, “Cô cần giúp với cái gì?” (What do you need help with?) In the follow up, a team of medical care providers and social service workers would come to assist her, me, my brothers, and even the person who harmed us. Instead, we were left with hasty prosecutors and a confusing court system that my mom was ushered in and out of.
I wonder what it would be like to have had mental health services available for my family. My mom who repeats patterns in the cycle of violence. My brothers who leave their problems unacknowledged and remain quiet about the harm they’ve experienced. It worries me for how they carry on in relationships to others, particularly in intimate partnerships.
If we’re earnest about being in solidarity with Black communities we must understand that the police is a U.S. institution that was created and maintained to intimidate and oppress Black people. There is no ending police brutality without dismantling the police. There is no meaningful solidarity unless we put money in the pockets of Black people.
I feel so strongly about the need to challenge ourselves and our family to think about a world without police. This may seem like a wild ask, because the institution of policing is so embedded the fabric of this country, but this is the move for transformative justice we must take to see a world without police killings.