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?
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.)
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
https://act.moveon.org/go/140588?t=6&akid=266544%2E40999114%2EpfZxWZ
2. "Minneapolis City Council votes to replace police with another model," The Center Square, June 15, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/140589?t=8&akid=266544%2E40999114%2EpfZxWZ
3. "What to Know About Calls to Defund the Police in California," The New York Times, June 9, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/140590?t=10&akid=266544%2E40999114%2EpfZxWZ
4. "De Blasio Vows for First Time to Cut Funding for the N.Y.P.D." The New York Times, June 7, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/140591?t=12&akid=266544%2E40999114%2EpfZxWZ
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?
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
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