John,

Folks are amplifying the call across the country to defund the police and invest in programs that defend and lift up Black communities.

Women’s Marchers have been busy supporting protests in their communities, writing letters to the editors of their local newspapers, attending trainings, demanding action from our leaders, and thousands of you have signed our national petition to Defund the Police.

Now, we’re witnessing a big shift in the national conversation around police reform. An unprecedented number of elected officials are now reassessing their police programs and rethinking the way we protect our communities.

We need to keep this momentum going, so we’re checking again, John, if you can sign our Defund the Police petition. We’re at an inflection point in our country’s history, and we need to raise our voices louder than ever if we want to move in the right direction.

Here are a few signs that progress is possible if we keep fighting:

• San Francisco’s mayor announced that police would no longer respond to non-criminal calls and would be replaced with trained, unarmed professionals for help on matters involving mental health, the homeless, school discipline and neighbor disputes.¹
• The Minneapolis City Council announced its commitment to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.²
• Baltimore approved $22 million in divestment from their police department.³
• Los Angeles city officials are considering scaling back their police budget.⁴
• Elected officials in Seattle have committed to cutting police funding by 50%.⁵

This is a direct result of all the folks who rose up to demand change. But we cannot stop here, John.

We need to keep lifting up the voices of Black folks, especially Black women and Black trans women, who are leading this fight. And we cannot rest until all cities and counties across the country follow suit and defund the police.

There is no one-stop solution, but we know we need to immediately redirect funds away from the police and into emergency response programs that don’t kill Black people.

We won’t let up.

Women’s March Team