AOC on Abolition & Healing | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Let’s talk public safety. By now, we know the traditional policy response to crime: Crime happens, policing budgets increase, crime happens more, budgets increase more, punishments worsen and surveillance expands (while surveillance tech + prison contractors make a lot of money in the process). But if our goal is to actually reduce + stop violence, we must ask: does this punitive approach even work? Are increased policing and prisons actually proven to reduce or prevent violence? What, if anything, DOES work? You’d be surprised at the data + results.

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There is so much pressure from media, lobbies, and political powers to imply that the more violence occurs, the more policing or incarceration is needed to stop or fix it. But after decades of committing to the endless cycle of budget increases and punitive measures over and over, we must eventually contend with the fact that if this traditional approach actually worked to stop or significantly reduce violence, perhaps it would have clearly proven so by now.

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I know how hard it is to question one’s own beliefs and assumptions. And in that spirit I want to enter this conversation with humility too. Here are some thoughts that have shaped my approach, and ways that we’ve acted on tangibly with our investments in community violence interruption programs at our public hospitals like Jacobi SUV (which has already proven to be more successful at halting reoccurrence of violence than almost any other measure we know of).

But most importantly, my wish is that we become more capable of engaging these ideas seriously and be willing to converse and ask genuine questions in public. It’s okay to evolve and grow together, and we can do more than yell past each other or box each other into caricatures. Because ultimately, safety is asking something of each of us: how WE engage in relationships, harm, and healing - both personally and societally.