The war on drugs was never a war on drugs, it was a war on people. Our criminal justice system has had very little to do with justice.

All too often, law enforcement has been about public safety in certain communities, and repression in others. Racial injustice is in the cracked roads we drive on and the underfunded schools we send our kids too.

It’s in the water we drink, the farms that are taken from us, and the homes we’ve never been able to own.  The injustice is structural and comprehensive, so our approach to combating it must also be.

As Reverend Dr. William Barber has argued, “We must have a third reconstruction.” We need to ensure ourselves true liberation through reimagining public safety and creating generational prosperity by investing in Black communities with reparations and a Black New Deal.