Even with a new administration in office, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) isn’t taking its foot off the gas in its efforts to defend Black lives. A national network of organizations and individuals creating a broad political home for Black people, M4BL is active in communities across the nation with initiatives to learn, organize and take action.
Always looking to the future, the movement is currently focused on investing in policies and institutions that directly benefit and impact Black communities. Its goal is clearly defined: “We demand investments in the education, health and safety of Black people, instead of investments in the criminalizing, caging and harming of Black people.”Since the Biden-Harris administration earned 87 percent of the Black vote in the 2020 election, M4BL is holding legislators accountable to the demands and needs of the people who put them in office. The organization is also leading a charge to divest from ineffective, racist institutions like policing and incarceration in order to invest in people and communities.
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“We want investments in Black communities, determined by Black communities, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance and exploitative corporations,” M4BL continues.
This includes reparations for the devastating impact of the “war on drugs” and the criminalization of sex work, as well as reinvestment in restorative services, mental health services, job programs and other efforts supporting those impacted by the unjust criminal legal system that engenders police violence and mass incarceration.
“With the new administration now in office, the Movement for Black Lives will keep mobilizing and organizing to reverse centuries of disinvestment in Black communities to invest in a future where we can all be connected, represented, and free. We will ensure that elected leaders make good on their promises to the movements that hold them accountable and the communities who put them into office,” Karissa Lewis, M4B National Field Director, recently wrote.
M4BL’s Frameworks for Change in 2021
One of M4BL’s biggest goals is an ongoing push to defund the police and reallocate funds at federal, state and local levels, a move that would hopefully put an end to the correlating incarceration boom. Redirected funding could then be used on long-term strategies like education, community employment programs, restorative justice services and more.
While some may still have concerns around how we will keep our communities safe, defunding the police doesn’t mean an immediate elimination of all law enforcement. It’s understood that peacekeeping is an essential service, and replacing institutions that don’t serve Black people won’t become a reality overnight. But through a shared vision of safety that actually works, communities can transition to innovative new approaches to security and accountability that better serve the needs of the people.
As Lewis writes, “Last year, our movement made defund the police a national rallying cry in the streets. In 2021, we will advance strategies to transition from overreliance on excessive, brutal and discriminatory policing to new systems of public safety that included demilitarized safety strategies, which is the right path forward.”
Source: Invest And Divest: The Movement for Black Lives Is On the Front Lines For Black Liberation
