Houston activist Ken Rodgers works to ensure that Blackshear Elementary students receive all the necessary in-school and out-of-school support.
Houston-born national union leader Claude Cummings, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), champions the cause of a living wage.
Several local grassroots activists, including members of the advocacy group Pure Justice, are fighting for greater investment in jobs, housing and healthcare.
What they all have in common is a push to expand the way the general public defines public safety.
Traditionally, public safety is viewed as a function of the number of police who are on the street, and the rate lawbreakers are prosecuted and jailed. To that end, President-Elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “free police to do their job” (via immunity from prosecution) fits this traditional view of public safety.
However, Trump’s call did not elicit feelings of safer days ahead for Black people who voted overwhelmingly for his presidential opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. In fact, many equate Trump’s plan with the resurrection of the racially-biased “stop-and-frisk” policy; a policy that had many in the Black community feeling less safe.
So, it stands to reason that many in the Black community do not view the idea of more police in neighborhoods equaling more community safety.
In fact, a national movement has been afoot for the past decade, challenging Black communities and others to expand their definitions of public safety.
In 2013, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights began the Night Out for Safety and Liberation to that end. It’s an alternative to the police-centric annual National Night Out, which highlights police-community partnerships as the pathway to community safety.
The overall negative history of law enforcement’s interaction with Black people alone calls that idea into question.
The Ella Baker Center and its national network, along with initiatives like Campaign Zero, promote a more holistic definition of community safety – one that believes less police and/or more community investment can enhance community safety.
MEETING COMMUNITY NEEDS
Locally, the advocacy group Pure Justice promotes its RISE initiative to deliver that same message.
“We created a campaign, it’s called RISE, ‘Reimagining Safety for Everyone,’ because when you start digging into the word ‘safety,’ depending on who you’re talking to, it’s defined differently,” said RoShawn Evans, co-founder and organizing director of Pure Justice. “For some, safety is putting as much money as you can into the things that have caused generational trauma and harm to the masses.
“Some people believe in throwing money into a system that has been proven not to work, like law enforcement or building more courts and more jails.”
Evans points out that 65.8% of Harris County’s overall budget is spent on “public safety” in the form of jails, courts, firefighters and law enforcement.
“That leaves less than 35% of the budget spent on things we actually need to survive, like housing, healthcare, mental health education. When you’re spending more money on incarcerating people from the vulnerabilities they have, then you are not creating a safe space,” he added.
RISE galvanizes grassroots justice advocates to go into historically under-resourced communities and organize residents by finding out what they need to feel safer.
“When you ask them what they need to feel safe, they’re telling you deodorant and washing powder and housing, some kind of economic opportunity, just a job in general. So, with our RISE campaign, what we would like to see is more money start flowing to the programs we need to survive.”
To Evans’ point, a study by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Aaron Chalfin found that reducing police spending does not lead to a spike in crime. The UPenn study reviewed spending on state and local police over the past 60 years and discovered there’s no correlation between police spending and crime rates.
Yet, for decades, politicians and others have told Americans crime only goes down when spending on police and jails goes up.
However, individuals and organizations locally and nationally are promoting public safety beyond policing, and are attempting to redirect funding (tax dollars) to initiatives that have been proven to work.
QUALITY SCHOOLS
National research shows that when neighborhood high schools and/or their feeder pattern middle and elementary schools close, crime rises and neighborhoods become less safe.
Houston activist Ken Rodgers wasn’t thinking about research statistics when he saw enrolment numbers at Houston’s iconic Jack Yates High School dropping. He focused on strengthening one of Yates’ main feeder elementary schools – Blackshear – and helping children have a Merry Christmas.
The result: For the past decade, Rodgers has organized Operation Love, which provides Blackshear students and any attending youth with toys for Christmas, haircuts, manicures, free food and more. Operation Love has grown into a community event that includes healthcare providers, area businesses and service providers. It donates its time, goods and services so that children and adults in attendance leave the event with what they need.
Operation Love sets an example of how investment in neighborhood schools can change things for the better.
Jackie Anderson, who is president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, takes that premise a step further.
“Schools are the lifeblood of our communities. What educators impart to our students are lessons for life,” said Anderson. “The teachers’ working condition is the students’ learning condition. Therefore, to support and nurture students, teachers need to be supported by their administration. As students leave the school environment and return to their various neighborhoods, those life lessons go forth. Children learn what they live.
LIVING WAGE
The federal minimum hourly wage is just $7.25. Congress has not increased it since 2009. Low wages hurt all workers and are particularly harmful to Black workers and other workers of color—especially women—who make up a disproportionate share of severely underpaid workers.
Communications Workers of America (CWA) President and Houston resident Claude Cummings insists that a living wage and union jobs are critical, and not just for people’s bottom line.
“Research has shown that more economic inequality leads to more crime and that where unions are stronger, crime rates are lower,” said Cummings, a Kashmere High School alum. “Unions also reduce racial resentment. That’s not surprising. Working people of all races see that the current economic and political system in the United States is serving billionaires instead of our families.
“Inconsistent scheduling and the high cost of child care make it hard for people with young children to hold down a job. The lack of paid sick time and family leave means one major illness could land you in the unemployment line. Union representation gives us more power over our own lives and a way to fight back together against corporate control instead of turning against each other. In order to rebuild our communities and increase our safety, we must make it easier for all workers to join unions.”
OTHER
Examples from across the country show that housing stability, teen summer jobs, healthcare access, pollution reduction, civilian neighborhood watches, and other methods are effective methods of increasing safety.
“When people actually have resources flowing through the community… how much safer that is in comparison to over-policing spaces that don’t have the resources,” said Evans.
