On July 7th, as protests against systemic racism and colonization continued, organizations under the Movement for Black Lives umbrella joined to create a bill that has the potential to radically transform the social and criminal-justice systems in America.
The Breathe Act was created by more than 150 groups that all belong to the Movement for Black Lives organization. M4BL believes in the transformation and radical realignment of power; they are abolitionist and anti-capitalist. According to their website they, “believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system,” and that “prisons, police and all other institutions that inflict violence on Black people must be abolished and replaced by institutions that value and affirm the flourishing of Black lives.” They focus on “centering the experiences and leadership of the most marginalized Black people, including but not limited to those who are trans and queer, women and femmes, currently and formerly incarcerated, immigrants, disabled, working class, and poor.”
What would the bill entail?
According to its creators, the BREATHE Act’s name is a reference to Black people’s inability to breathe, metaphorically and sometimes literally, in the United States. The “time-bound plan” calls for all federal prisons and immigration detention centers to be closed and for federal money to be returned back to the communities most vulnerable to unchecked capitalism.
The BREATHE Act would:
-
Abolish the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
-
Abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
-
Abolish the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, which allows local police to have excess military equipment from the government
-
Ban police departments from using military-grade weapons and surveillance
-
Divest federal resources from incarceration and policing to end the violence of the criminal-legal system in America
-
Reallocate funds to healthcare, education, environmental and social-welfare programs
-
Hold officials accountable by requiring congress to acknowledge and address the lasting harms that it has caused
-
Ensure democratic, fair, and secure voting processes that are free from racial discrimination and voter suppression in every state
-
Pass H.R.40, which establishes a congressional committee to study how American government could give reparations to the descendants of enslaved people
-
Grant all formerly incarcerated people the right to vote in federal elections
-
Grant undocumented people the right to vote in local and state jurisdictions
Gina Clayton Johnson, executive director of Essie Justice Group and one of the creators of the bill, said that, “we crafted the bill to be big…because we know the solution has to be as big as the 400-year-old problem itself.”
According to The Cut, “The policy-makers view it as a modern-day Civil Rights Act, one that not only touches on the horrifying plague of murders of Black men and women by police officers but also holistically tackles all the elements of our broken social-welfare systems that inform it.”
Who will be championing this bill if introduced in congress?
Representatives Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley, of Massachusetts, said that they support this bill, although no members of congress have said that they would introduce it yet.
Will it actually happen?
The BREATHE Act will face an incredible amount of resistance in Congress if it were to be introduced as is summarized on the bill’s website. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has been the only democrat vocal about dismantling police departments.
The Minneapolis Police Department has proven themselves beyond reform.
It’s time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis.
Thank you to @MplsWard3 for your leadership on this! https://t.co/AQfHM5M6eR
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 5, 2020
In an interview on CNN, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass says that this may be an “opportunity to re-envision public safety,” but that police departments should not disband.
Legislation like The BREATHE Act, created by grassroots organizing, questions the purpose of the police. Scholars have been writing about the benefits of restructuring law enforcement in the United States. Alex S. Vitale, renowned writer and Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, unpacked the fundamental shift of the role of police in society in his book The End of Policing.
University of Michigan professor and criminal justice expert Heather Ann Thompson shared her thoughts about the pushback with The Associated Press.
“I think those programs that they’re suggesting eliminating only look radical if we really ignore the fact that there has been tremendous pressure to meaningfully reform this criminal justice system.”
