01 Divest & Reallocate Police Funding

Design Justice demands that our governing bodies divest funds supporting policing institutions, which unjustly target marginalized people, and reinvest into spaces of care and support within disenfranchised communities. 

Policing is a system designed to uphold oppression and is responsible for generations of violence against Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian people. We demand accountability for the actions of police officers who use excessive force and engage in misconduct within our communities. We call for the end of surveillance and militarization of our streets, parks, schools and community spaces. Divestment in police departments, police unions, and the prison industrial complex they uphold is a step towards reducing the scale, scope, power, authority and legitimacy of these systems that unjustly criminalize.

In turn, we demand that funds be reallocated towards enabling a world without police, where communities ensure their own safety and well being. We as designers must support the building up of life sustaining systems and spaces that reduce, prevent and better address harm. We must be actors in the visioning and reinvestment into systematically marginalized communities and work to focus resources and funding towards the creation of just and reparative social and spatial infrastructures.