Dear MoveOn member,
This Friday is Juneteenth, an annual celebration commemorating the end of
slavery in the United States. To honor this solemn anniversary and to
demand continued work toward true liberation for black people in this
country, hundreds of thousands of people will take to the streets in a
national day of action organized by Black-led groups on the front lines of
this fight.
We will remember ...
George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Ahmaud Arbery
Rem'mie Fells
Riah Milton
Tony McDade
Rayshard Brooks
Oluwatoyin Salau
And the countless other Black lives lost to police brutality and racist
violence.
As MoveOn members, we're going to continue supporting those who have been
taking to the streets since the brutal killing of George Floyd, and doing
our part to fight for change—members have raised nearly $2 million for the
Movement for Black Lives and National Bail Out and brought together
millions of voices amplifying Color of Change's calls for justice for
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Looking beyond this Friday, we've identified two ways we believe our
members and our grassroots muscle can have the most impact: demanding
accountability and divestment from politicians, including many Democrats,
who have accepted money from police unions, and supporting the critical
work to defund bloated and violent police departments while investing in
real solutions for community safety.
We cannot afford to lose the momentum that organizers have worked to gain
over the past few weeks toward making real progress to reduce police
violence.
On average, MoveOn's monthly donors chip in about $10 a
month. Will you chip in $10 a month to help power
MoveOn's work to fight for racial justice and an end to out-of-control
policing?
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in monthly.
[ [link removed] ]No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
Why are these areas our focus?
To be clear, unions serve an essential role and are critical to a just
economy: They fight for fairness and better working conditions for their
members, and they built the middle class in this country. However, police
unions are different. As has been made clear over the past few weeks, the
power of police unions to protect officers from facing consequences for
crimes is immense, but possibly even more troubling is the dangerous
amount of control police unions wield over politicians with the power to
write their budgets and block critically needed reforms.
Each election cycle, police unions donate millions of dollars to
candidates across the country, all the way from the president to local
city council seats. And a large portion of that money is given to
Democrats. In fact, 95% of the donations by the the Fraternal Order of
Police, one of the largest police unions, went to Democrats in 2012.^1
It's time to get that money out of politics. From oil to tobacco to
pharmaceuticals to guns, we know how much sway donations can have—and we
know the impact it can have when politicians reject money from powerful
special interests, both in the message it sends and in the way it breaks
their grip. Which is why we are building a massive pressure campaign to
demand that Democratic politicians redirect any money they have received
from police unions and commit to never taking money from them again.
This is a first step toward achieving the bigger goal: defunding the
police and reinvesting those funds in programs that allow our communities,
especially Black and brown communities, to thrive.
Because of the leadership of Black activists and organizers on the ground,
the ground has shifted on this issue faster than anyone could have
imagined just weeks ago. Shrinking the bloated budgets of police
departments reduces their potential for brutality and harm. And now, for
the first time, it's becoming a real political possibility.
Already, a veto-proof majority on the Minneapolis City Council vowed to
eliminate the Minneapolis Police Department and build a new, better way to
provide real safety for city residents, and big cities like Los Angeles
have begun to cut budgets and move funding away from police departments,
while leading politicians in New York look to do the same.^2,3,4
But make no mistake: This is going to be a long fight, fought in city
council meetings, in state capitols, and on the floor of Congress. To
achieve reform, we need to break the powerful grip police unions hold over
too many municipal governments, in part by cutting off the financial hold
they have over politicians.
MoveOn is ready to flex our grassroots muscles to provide support in this
fight—organizing our millions of members, working to elect politicians who
will push for these reforms, and supporting the incredible work of
organizations like the Movement for Black Lives.
But our power has always come from our members, which is why we're asking,
John: Can you chip in $10 a month to help with
our campaign? (The average gift from a MoveOn monthly donor is about $10
a month, but whatever you can afford will go a long
way.)
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in monthly.
[ [link removed] ]No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
Thanks for all you do.
–Mohammad, Gabi, Ankur, Eric, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "Police unions face lobbying fights at all levels of government," The
Hill, June 13, 2020
[link removed]
2. "Minneapolis City Council votes to replace police with another model,"
The Center Square, June 15, 2020
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3. "What to Know About Calls to Defund the Police in California," The New
York Times, June 9, 2020
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4. "De Blasio Vows for First Time to Cut Funding for the N.Y.P.D." The New
York Times, June 7, 2020
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Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day
by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage,
defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's
pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must
never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than
ever. Will you stand with us?
[ [link removed] ]Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month.
[ [link removed] ]No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
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